Watson & Crick

James Watson and Francis Crick

On Feb. 28, 1953, Francis Crick walked into the Eagle pub in Cambridge, England, and, as James Watson later recalled, announced that "we had found the secret of life." Actually, they had. That morning, Watson and Crick had figured out the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. And that structure — a "double helix" that can "unzip" to make copies of itself — confirmed suspicions that DNA carries life's hereditary information.

The two men collaborated together were both an odd pair, the British Crick, at 35 still had no Ph.D. The American Watson, 12 years younger than Crick had graduated from the University of Chicago at 19 and his doctorate aged 22. They both shared an indifference to boundaries, and the bring together of their two mind revealed one of natures greatest mysteries. One colleague described their collaboration as "that marvellous resonance between two minds-that high state in which 1 plus 1 does not equal 2 but more like 10."