Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2342

JAMES DEWEY WATSON (b. 1928) Molecular structure of nucleic acids: A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. (In Nature. Vol. 171 (1953), pp. 737-738.) 24.8 cm.

Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the genetic substance of all living cells, was first discovered in 1869 by Johann Friedrich Miescher (1844-1895), a German biochemist. However, its actual structure, a double helix consisting of a pair of strands of polynucleotides coiled together, was not determined until 1953 when it was reported in this paper. This epoch-making achievement by Watson, an American biochemist, and Crick, a British molecular biologist, was based in part on X-ray studies performed by Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins (b. 1916) at King's College in London. Watson, Crick, and Wilkins shared the Nobel prize for their work in 1962.

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 752.1