Watson and crick nobel prize

At midday on 28 February 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson walked into The Eagle pub in Cambridge and announced “We have discovered the secret of life.”

Earlier that morning, in the nearby Cavendish laboratory, the two scientists had discovered the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA.

This discovery changed the world of science and medicine forever. Crick, Watson, and Maurice Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize for their work in 1962.

Crick and Watson’s discovery

DNA was discovered in 1869, but it took until 1943 before scientists realised that DNA was the genetic material in cells, and that it contained a code for life. The next step was to find out its structure, in order to understand how the gene, the basic unit of heredity, works and how it is passed from one generation to the next.

Crick and Watson were trying to build a 3D model of the DNA molecule. But they were not the only ones working on finding its structure. They were competing with a team a Settings!