“The laws of inheritance are quite unknown,” Charles Darwin acknowledged in 1859. The discovery of DNA’s shape altered how we conceived of life itself. The X-ray crystallography by Rosalind Franklin ...

In the grand hall of scientific “Eureka!” moments, few have been paraded around as proudly as the discovery of DNA’s double helix—the so-called blueprint of life, the sacred code behind genetics, ...

James D. Watson, whose co-discovery of the twisted-ladder structure of DNA in 1953 helped light the long fuse on a revolution in medicine, crimefighting, genealogy and ethics, has died, according to ...