Discovery of the DNA double helix
Watson and Crick's model explains how heredity works
In April 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick published their double-helix model of DNA in Nature, drawing on X-ray images by Rosalind Franklin. It revealed how heredity works and gave birth to molecular biology.
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Did you know
Spring 1953: the structure of DNA was published on 25 April, and on 29 May Hillary and Tenzing reached the top of Everest.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1939–1945 World War II — 14 years earlier
- 1945 Founding of the United Nations — 8 years earlier
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 6 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 5 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 4 years earlier
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 12 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 11 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 8 years earlier
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 4 years later
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 8 years later
Middle East
- 1932 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia proclaimed — 21 years earlier
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 5 years earlier
Africa
- 1956 The Suez Crisis — 3 years later
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart — 5 years later
- 1960 Year of Africa — 7 years later
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 10 years later
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 14 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 8 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — same year
- 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu — 1 year later
- 1955–1975 Vietnam War — 2 years later
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 22 years later
Americas
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 24 years earlier
- 1947 Invention of the transistor — 6 years earlier
- 1955 Salk polio vaccine declared safe — 2 years later
- 1969 Moon landing — 16 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 17 years later
Oceania
- 1936 Death of the last thylacine — 17 years earlier
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 12 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 11 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 1 year later
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 6 years later
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 79)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 75)
- Albert Einstein (aged 74)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 72)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 64)
- Mao Zedong (aged 60)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 35)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 24)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 23)
- Yuri Gagarin (aged 19)