The double helix

Watson and Crick proposed the double-helix structure of DNA, crucially informed by Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction images.

Why it matters

Life's memory turned out to be digital — a four-letter code with error correction, copied and proofread. Biology became an information science, the pathway to genomics and biotechnology.

People

Rosalind Franklin · James Watson · Francis Crick

Related events

• 1859

  Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species

  Darwin proposed that species change over generations through variation and selection — design without a designer, accumulated small steps.

  Science · europe

• 2003

  The human genome is sequenced

  The international public consortium and Celera simultaneously announced essentially complete drafts of the three-billion-letter human genome.

  Medicine

• 1905 – 1915

  Einstein rewrites space and time

  In one miraculous year Einstein explained the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and special relativity; a decade later general relativity curved spacetime itself around mass.

  Science · europe

Sources

• Encyclopædia Britannica — DNA