The History Of DNA

Gregor Mendel

1866

Gregor Mendel discovered the fundamental laws of inheritance. He deduced that genes come in pairs and are inherited as distinct units, one from each parent.

Friedrich Miescher

1869

Friedrich Miescher isolated "nuclein," DNA with associated proteins

Frederick Griffith

1928

Frederick Griffith was a British bacteriologist. Griffith's famous 1928 experiment showed us that bacteria can distinctly change their function and form through transformation.

Oswald Avery

1944

Avery is best known for the experiment that isolated DNA as the material of which genes and chromosomes are made.

Erwin Chargaff

1950

In 1949, Chargaff discovered that the proportions of bases in DNA depend on the species the DNA comes from.

Rosalind Franklin

1952

Franklin is best known for her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA, particularly Photo 51

Hershey & Chase

1953

Hershey and Chase concluded that DNA, not protein, was the genetic material.

Watson & Crick

1954

Watson and Crick announce that they have determined the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecule containing human genes.

J.Craig Venter

2003

Venter is known for leading the first draft sequence of the human genome and assembled the first team to transfect a cell with a synthetic chromosome.

Francis Collins

2003

Collins discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project.