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Friedrich Miescher
he was the first to identify DNA as a distinct molecule. I found it interesting that he discovered this in a university -
Frederick Griffith
He made a model showing that bacteria can get DNA through a process called transformation. I find it cool that he did this by himself -
Oswald Avery, Maclyn McCarty & Colin McCleod
They showed that DNA was the transforming principle. It changed all the time -
Barbara McClintock
She discovered that chromosomes can vary -
Erwin Chargaff
He discovered that the proportions of bases in DNA depend on the species the DNA comes from. This is a major breakthrough at the time -
Linus Pauling
He became known as the founder of molecular biology due to his discovery of the spiral structure of proteins. I find it interesting that he got a nobel peace prize. -
Frederick Sanger
He was working out the amino-acid sequence of cow insulin -
Alfred Hershey & Martha Chase
They concluded that protein was not genetic material, and that DNA was genetic material. I find it interesting that they discovered this kind of recently -
Rosalind Franklin & Maurice Wilkins
They revealed the physical and chemical basis of how characteristics are passed down through the generations and how they are expressed in individual organisms. -
James Watson & Frances Crick
In 1953 they announce they have found the structure for a double helix -
Matthew Meselson & Franklin Stahl
They invented the technique of density gradient and used this to prove that DNA is replicated semi-conservatively. -
Paul Berg
He was inserting DNA from a bacterium into the virus' DNA. He in turn created hybrid DNA -
Kary Mullis
He invented the process known as polymerase chain reaction, in which a small amount of DNA can be copied in large quantities over a short period of time. -
J. Craig Venter
He made the first synthetic chromosome