The double helix - James Watson

The greatest achievement of science in the twentieth century ... It will be an enormous success, and deserves to be so - a classic in the sense it will go on being read' - Sir Peter Medawar Francis Crick and James Watson revolutionized biochemistry by elucidating the structure of DNA - and won themselves a Nobel Prize. At the time Watson was only 24, with more interest in girls than in chemistry. His uncompromisingly honest account of those heady days lifts the lid on the real world of greatscientists and the extraordinary excitement of their desperate attempts to beat Linus Pauling to the solution to one of the great enigmas of the life sciences.