 Now back in the day, like, say, the 1950s, it became clear that figuring out the structure of DNA, the DNA molecule, was the next big frontier. And whoever was going to figure that out was going to be a hugely famous scientist. It was going to be kind of an epic moment. And there were a couple of odd fellows who started collaborating in their efforts to figure this out. And honestly, they were kind of... they were highly unlikely candidates for actually being successful. And that's Francis Crick and James Watson. Now, Linus Pauling was considered the father of biochemistry or the king of biochemistry. I mean, he was like of structural chemistry. Like, he was the guru of all people who can figure out what molecules look like. And take a second to think about how bizarre this is. Who could figure out what a molecule... you can't even look at a molecule. So you... it's so tiny, and they certainly didn't have the resources that we have now. And they had to do all sorts of data collection and then inference and then figuring out, okay, if the data are saying this, then what kind of test can I create to provide evidence that yes, that is what the data actually are saying. You can imagine if you're trying to figure out something that you can't even look at. You can't even grab it and wiggle it around. And it's going to be a big challenge. And old boy Linus here was an expert. He was the king of the field. Whereas Francis and James, they were kind of like these little nerdy nerds who, you know, everybody was like, dude, whatever they're talking about, nobody knows. But they became kind of obsessed with this process of trying to figure this out. And they actually, well, they basically stole some data from Rosalind Franklin, who she actually was taking X-ray diffraction images of the DNA molecule. And she was exceptional. She was an exceptional scientist. And she actually, you know, was working with X-rays for a long time and collecting just incredible data. I'm going to show you a picture of the DNA molecule that she has, is very famous for having taken. She died of, I think it was uterine cancer because of this extreme exposure to X-rays. But she was extremely committed. She had a guy in her lab, Maurice Wilkins. They weren't too fond of each other, but Maurice was really interested in what she was doing in her lab and this work on DNA that she was doing. Maurice actually ended up stealing her data, stealing this picture right here, which I personally look at that picture and go, mm-hmm, that's a double helix? What? But she knew how to interpret something like this and could see from this picture that the DNA molecule was a double helix or had a helical shape. Crazy, complicated, fantastic. After Watson and Crick were given the stolen data that Rosalind actually figured out herself and she didn't offer to share it, they just took it. Once they had access to this, they actually had this epiphany and figured out that the shape of the DNA molecule. Another person who was key in this, dude, check out this guy, this is so awesome. How can these things exist on the Internet? If you search for Irwin Shargap, like this guy, first of all, seriously, I have a better picture of him. What? He just cracks me up. Like, okay, he was thinking he was pretty hot stuff. But, like, I mean, we talk about the dead white guys who are responsible for all of these scientific discoveries and then you go look them up and they make sure you know not only dead white, but he's got to be straight, too. Okay, whatever, like, that's just crazy talk that we actually have that kind of information out there. He did some research on DNA molecules, the nucleotides themselves, and the nitrogen bases on the nucleotides. And so his data came into play in figuring all this stuff out. His sharing was legit. He published his papers, Watson and Crick were able to access his research and look at it and study it and talk to him about it. But that definitely played a role in helping them figure out the structure of DNA. So, okay, that's awesome. They did figure it out. I think it was 1953 that they published a paper suggesting the structure of DNA and using Rosalind's data. They actually won the Nobel Prize for their discovery, which makes complete sense. It was a totally clutch move back in the day. And today, I mean, it's critical information that we have. Rosalind died because she had uterine cancer. She probably would have been... Well, I don't know. This is an interesting question. Would she have been person number three on the Nobel Prize, even though she didn't have a penis? I don't know. Instead, person number three was Maurice Wilkins, who stole her data and gave it to Watson and Crick. I mean, he won the Nobel Prize. That's awesome. Okay, so if you're interested in this story, it's pretty fantastic. I hope that we'll have a lab on this topic to explore. It's really interesting the history on this thing. Before we look at their actual, like what they figured out about the structure of DNA, we have to look at something that they already knew at this point. They knew that DNA was an example of a nucleic acid and that it was made of nucleotides. And so we need to look at what is a nucleic acid and what exactly is a nucleotide.