The story goes that Francis Crick walked into a pub near the Cambridge University lab where he and James Watson had been working and interrupted all the patrons’ lunches for a rather momentous announcement 62 years ago on February 28, 1953…he and Watson had “found the secret of life.” If the anecdote is true, Crick wasn’t too far off. By discovering the molecular structure of DNA, he and Watson had indeed made a discovery worth looking up from your bangers and mash for.

Deoxyribonucleic acid, as the smart kids call it, had been on scientists’ radar for decades prior to Watson and Crick. As a microscopic substance in the nuclei of human cells that was made up of nucleic acid, DNA was known by the late 19th century. Experiments in the 20th century suggested, and then confirmed, its role as an engine of hereditary traits.

What was still unknown was how the structure of the DNA molecule allowed it to pass traits through generations of living organisms. By isolating the now-famous double helix structure of DNA, the American Watson and English Crick helped birth the entire field of molecular biology. Each DNA molecule contains a spiral of two DNA strands, which in turn are composed of nucleotides which contain one of four compounds…the ordering and pairing of which contain all the genetic information needed to code a life.

The genetic revolution has touched every segment of modern society, impacting medicine, agriculture, forensics, and archaeology. Even if the technical details escape us, we intuit the meaning of Watson and Crick’s work anytime we say something is so central to our being that it’s “in our DNA.” Watson and Crick would formally announce their discovery in Nature magazine in April 1953. But for a few unsuspecting patrons at Cambridge’s Eagle pub on this date, a sneak peek at the future arrived along with their steak and kidney pudding. Who says you can’t find the meaning of life on a barstool?

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