Word: dna
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...which her adolescent-minded antagonists therefore insisted on using] had to go or be put in her place. The former was obviously preferable because, given her belligerent moods, it would be very difficult for [Wilkins] to maintain a dominant position that would allow him to think unhindered about DNA...
...bothered to take notes. "If a subject interested me," he would write, "I could usually recollect what I needed. This time, however, we were in trouble, because I did not know enough of the crystallographic jargon." A key point was the amount of water present in Franklin's DNA samples. Watson remembered the number incorrectly...
Armed with this crucially wrong information, the two began working in earnest. Conventional biochemistry had long since told scientists what DNA was made of: four types of organic molecules, known as bases--adenine, cytosine, thymine, guanine, or A, C, T and G--almost certainly strung somehow along a "backbone" of sugar and phosphate. The question was, How? "Perhaps a week of solid fiddling with the molecular models would be necessary," writes Watson, "to make us absolutely sure we had the right answer. Then it would be obvious to the world that Pauling was not the only one capable of true...
...weeks later, Crick and Watson were pretty sure they had it. DNA was a triple helix. They invited Wilkins to take a look at their model, and to their surprise, Franklin came along too. It didn't take long for everyone to realize that Watson's memory had betrayed him. The amount of water a DNA molecule had to contain was a whopping 10 times the quantity he had assumed. The structure Crick and Watson had so confidently come up with was impossible...
Their mistake had two immediate effects. First, Bragg, already fed up with Crick's impertinence, forbade the pair to work actively on DNA. Second, Franklin, previously suspicious of Crick and even more so of Watson, was convinced that the latter, at least, was a blithering idiot. Chagrined, Watson and Crick turned over their model-making kits to the King's group and urged Wilkins and Franklin to use them. Watson and Crick may have been ambitious for themselves, but they were passionate about knowing the structure of DNA. If they couldn't make the discovery, they would have to acquiesce...