Life Story

The hunt for where life comes from and what life consists of involved many different personalities, places, and events that came together to reveal an answer that had particularly become of interest in the years preceding the discovery, as much of the world tried to move away from death and closer to life. In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick presented the structure and function of the nucleic acid DNA, the macromolecule found in living organisms. The final conclusion was not reached without effort, however. It took two years of experiments, questions, and errors before the scientists were certain that DNA was the "secret of life". Research experiments, scientific collaboration and collegiality, ethical and unethical behavior, the economic factors, the social values of the time, and the political climate in Europe and the USA all influenced the individuals involved in unlocking the secret of life and the process of searching for the answer. In 1951, in a conference in Naples, Watson grew increasingly interested in working to find this answer, which led to him London, where Wilkins, another scientist, was working on x-ray crystallography. It was in this city that the story of life began, with many scientists conducting research and sometimes cooperating and sometimes not. Despite the final outcome, not everything was positive in the process of reaching it. Actions were not always ethical.…