James Watson and Francis Crick

James Watson 1928 - and Francis Crick 1916 - discovered together the structure of DNA. Watson was born in America but came to Cambridge in Britain to study biochemistry. Crick was born in Northampton in Britain and was already working in Cambridge when Watson arrived.

They both had many accomplishments, but their most important was that of what DNA looked like.

Ever since Darwin's theory, people realised that characteristics were passed on from parent to offspring, but no one knew quite how this worked, or why, occasionally, an attribute appeared that had nothing to do with either parent.

In every cell in our bodies, we have long strings of proteins called genes. In most of the cells in our bodies we have 2 copies of these genes, but in females egg cells and in males sperm cells, there is only one copy of the gene. When fertilisation occurs, the embryo has two versions again, one from each parent.

In 1953, Watson and Crick discovered how these genes were made, and what the particles actually looked like.

This meant that scientists could understand what happened when things went wrong, and that variations appeared which hadn't come from either parent. Sometimes these variations can be useful (like a longer beak on finches for pecking into holes) and sometimes the variations can be very upsetting.

The study of DNA and genes has started a whole new area of research called genetics.

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