This week is the anniversary of what some have called the most important intellectual innovation in human history, the discovery of the structure of DNA. From a paper originally published in Nature on April 25, 1953, DNA has made it into the pantheon of chemical structures instantly known to all members of the public, scientist and nonscientist alike.
Other molecules with the same instantly recognizable status might be H2O and CO2 other acronyms as well-known are AIDS and HIV. Not everyone will know that DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid, but most people know that it is the molecule that contains the instructions for building life. The other day in Dublin, I saw the letters DNA sprayed mysteriously on a wall (on the next street there was more acronym graffiti, this time its context more understandable: IRA). The point is that DNA is now almost universally known. It is, as one commentator has put it, "the Mona Lisa of science."
It was not always so. The original publication, by James Watson and Francis Crick, ended with a famous piece of understatement: "This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest."