FREE ESSAY ON WATSON AND CRICK

WATSON AND CRICK

James Watson and Francis Crick
James Watson is a biochemist and Nobel laureate. He attended school at the University of
Indiana, after graduating from the university he joined of the faculty at Harvard
University. Before joining the faculty at Harvard he did postgraduate work with Francis
Crick in the Cavendish lab, at the University of Cambridge.
Watson and Crick worked out the deoxyribonucleic acid molecule. This is a substance that
transmits the genetic characteristics from one generation to the next. They both thought
that it should be possible to correctly guess it's structure, given the experimental
evidence of King's College. They also thought they could figure out the possible
stereochemical configurations of polynucleotide chains. They did there first serious
effort, in the late fall of 1951 and it turned out to be unsatisfactory. On their second
effort they had more experimental evidence, and put more appreciation into the nucleic
acid literature. 
Watson not only worked on the DNA structure he also did some work with Alexander Rich on
the RNA. Another one of Watson's experiments was the structure of TMV, using X-ray
diffraction techniques. This was to see if chemical sub-units, were helically arranged.
This was achieved in 1952, when use of the Cavendish's newly constructed rotating anode
X-ray tubes allowed an unambiguous demonstration of the helical construction of the
virus. 
Watson and Crick have helped the world in more ways than one. By experimenting with DNA
they have helped us to figure out human genetic questions. Their experiments also can
lead into other things, such as maybe cloning the human DNA strand.