In 1869, Swiss scientist Friedrich Miescher isolated a mysterious substance from cell nuclei—an overlooked finding that would ...

Before such adventurous chemists as Gerhard Schramm even tried to manufacture nucleic acid, they had to understand how its giant molecules are put together, how they function as the essence of life on ...

The first half of 20th-century science belonged to physics, with the general theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, and nuclear fission. The second half would belong to biology. In the post-war ...

James Watson, who has died aged 97, was the 25-year-old American biologist who in 1953, with Francis Crick, revealed the double helix structure of DNA, the chemical of which genes are made; for this ...