The double helix : a personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA
(Book)

Includes copy of March 12,1953 letter from University of Cambridge written to Max Delbrück telling of the double helix.

Autobiographical.

By identifying the structure of DNA, Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry and won a 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Maurice Wilkins . All the time Watson was only twenty-four, a young zoologist hungry to make his mark. His uncompromisingly honest account of the heady days of their thrilling sprint against other world-class researchers to solve one of science's greatest unsolved mysteries gives a dazzlingly clear picture of a world of scientists with great gifts, very human ambitions, and bitter rivalries. With humility unspoiled by false modesty, Watson relates his and Crick's desperate efforts to beat Linus Pauling to the identification of the basic building block of life.