In 1962 James Watson (1928-today), Francis Crick (1916-2004), and Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004) jointly received the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for their determination in 1953 of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Because the Nobel Prize can be awarded only to the living, Wilkins's colleague Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958), who died of cancer at the age of 37, could not be honored. The background for the work of the four scientists was formed by several scientific breakthroughs: the …showed first 75 words of 1671 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1671 total…at Cambridge and made fundamental contributions to unlocking the genetic code. He and Sydney Brenner demonstrated that each group of three adjacent bases on a single DNA strand codes for one specific amino acid. He also correctly hypothesized the existence of "transfer" RNA, which mediates between "messenger" RNA and amino acids. After 20 years at Cambridge, with several visiting professorships in the United States, Crick joined the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.