The challenging process of the discovery of DNA. Term Paper

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The Challenging Process of The Discovery Of DNA
Introduction
In “The Double Helix” by James Watson, the author provides his personal account of the journey through of the greatest breakthrough in Biology in the twentieth century after Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” While the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine was awarded to James Watson, of Harvard University, Francis Crick of Cambridge University, and Maurice Wilkins from the King’s College, a host of other scientists such as Rosalind Franklin and Linus Pauling made incredible contributions to the discovery of the DNA structure (Elkin 44). As with any scientific process, the discovery of DNA followed five major steps of scientific methods: making observations, asking questions, suggesting hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, and analyzing the results to make a conclusion. Through these steps, scientists encountered challenges in the search for useful scientific knowledge the led to the discovery. In finding the knowledge, scientists used the scientific process of collecting empirical evidence in various experiments related to their hypothesis to find results that supported their theory (Watson 221). This process usually involves testing and retesting hypotheses and exposing the hypotheses to rigorous method of scientific process. It is also at this stage where scientists agree and disagree until the right conclusions are made. In “The Double Helix,” Watson offers an unwaveringly honest account of the challenging process of scientific discovery of testing their hypothesis and making conclusions about the three-dimensional structure of DNA.
The process of scientific discovery begins with investigators making observations and asking critical questions related to their hypothesis. The scientists in the race of discovering the structure of DNA sought to find answers to three fundamental questions: if DNA contained a helical structure, the number of chains in the DNA helix, and the attractive forces that held the chains together (Watson 127). It is by solving these questions that the scientists could arrive at a conclusion of the structure of DNA. For instance, they had to decide about the number of chains contained in DNA and from evidence collected from X-ray data, they concluded that it was made of two, three, or four strands (Watson 77). The remaining question was to find the attractive forces that held the molecule together of which Francis was opposed to the answer that specific hydrogen bonds were the solution (Watson 127). After making serious inquiries, they agreed that the DNA bases formed hydrogen bonds to the corresponding bases and concluded the problem (Watson 183). Finally, in 1962, the prize was awarded to the trio Watson, a geneticist, Crick, a physicist who was working on his doctorate on the structure of hemoglobin crystals, and Wilkins who provided X-ray diffraction data on the structure of DNA (NOVA). Both Watson and Crick lacked the concepts of chemistry and Watson, who was a biologist, had little understanding of the principles of X-ray diffraction. To collect evidence in these areas, the scientists relied on experiments perform...