Discovery of The Double Helix

At the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, in 1953 James D. Watson and Francis Crick discovered the self-complimentary double-helical structure of the DNA molecule. In their paper, “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids. A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” Nature 171 (1953) 737-38, they stated that, “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.”