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Discovery of the Structure of
DNA
Source:
The Art of Innovation,
Tom Kelley
"I
decided that no harm could come
from spending a few days
building backbone models," said
1963 Nobel Prize winner James
Watson, referring to the metal
prototypes he and fellow
geneticist Francis Crick used to
model and test their hypotheses.
"Perhaps a week of solid
fiddling with the molecular
models would be necessary to
make us absolutely sure we had
the right answer."
Although their academic
colleagues were skeptical of the
approach, Watson and Crick's
freethinking style and openness
to two-dimensional and
three-dimensional prototyping
helped guide them toward the
momentous discovery of the
structure of DNA. Even Watson
sometimes wondered if he was
floundering. "My doodling of the
bases on paper at first got
nowhere. Not until the middle of
the next week, however, did a
nontrivial idea emerge. It came
while I was drawing the fused
rings of adenine on paper."
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