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The Structure of DNA (Watson, Crick, Franklin, 1953)
1953 double-helix discovery launched molecular biology. Most consequential science paper of the 20th century.
On April 25, 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick published a 900-word paper in Nature describing the double-helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid — a discovery built critically on X-ray diffraction data produced by Rosalind Franklin. The double helix immediately revealed how genetic information is copied: the two complementary strands unzip and each serves as a template. This single insight launched molecular biology, made genetic engineering possible, and gave medicine tools to diagnose and treat genetic disease at its root cause. The 1953 paper is arguably the most consequential science paper of the 20th century.
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