"Crick walked into the Eagle pub"
What he should have said is "I just stole an x-ray diffraction pattern from Rosalind Franklin and her work shows us the gross structure of DNA." If he did today what he did back then he would end his career as a scientist. Straight out theft is no longer tolerated very well like it was back then as long as the theft was from a women.
The components of DNA had been known for some time. But, the details of how the deoxyrobose sugar, phosphate linkages and the four bases were chemically linked together and that there were two strands that ran in opposite directions and how this allowed DNA to be accurately replicated were not understood. It took another dozen years to get any meaningful start on decoding the information in the DNA and we are still learning more today about that coding.
Dick
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