DNA Day

59 years ago today, the 25th April 1953, molecular biologists James Watson and Francis Crick published a paper in Nature which suggested a structure for DNA.

(Source, via Wikipedia)

Their paper 'Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid' provided a brilliantly simple answer to the question of how genetic instructions were both stored inside organisms and passed from one generation to the next. It described Rosalind Franklin's discovery of the structure of DNA, and had a major impact on the field of biology, and genetics in particular.

(Watson and Crick with Maclyn McCarty. Source, via Wikipedia)

Watson and Crick, along with Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".

(Source)

The full paper has been made available online and can be viewed here, with an annotated version here.