The Players:
As the story goes, the morning of February 28th, Francis Crick walked
into the Eagle pub in Cambridge, England, and announced that "We (he
and James Watson) had found the secret of life." What Watson and
Crick so boldly disclosed to this small group of men was the mechanism
by which life passes on its genetic material, a double helix of
nucleotides known as deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The discovery
of DNA built on early work on inheritance by Gregor Mendell and
it provided evolutionary theory with a mechanism by which genetic information can be passed from generation to
generation. In biology textbooks this pivotal point in history is
where the story of evolution begins , however the origin of
evolutionary theory has its roots cast in geology not biology, and
involves the work of everyday people who were able to use their keen
sense of observation to actively explore the world around them.
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/do53dn.html)