Flashpoints : discovery of the structure of DNA.

Three crucial discoveries of the 20th century were nuclear energy, the computer and the discovery of the molecular structure of DNA. This discovery turned the scientific world upside down. Different research groups were investigating the problem - Max Perrutz at the Cavendish, Max Delbruch at Caltech, Pasadena, and Irwin Shroedinger in Austria. Perrutz says Shroedinger who had the idea of an aperiodic crystal which copied itself, was completely wrong. Delbruch was a physicist, an outsider, working on the mechanism of inheritance, and he idealized and simplified the problem. These physicists brought new approaches to biology. Xray crystallography was a new technique which used xrays to work out the arrangement of atoms in molecules. Crick, the physicist, and Watson, the biologist, built models based on xray pictures. These had been developed at Kings College by Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin.