The discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule was in 1953. It was the result of work by James Watson and Francis Crick at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at King's College, London, who are barely known for it...Here are some facts of DNA's history:
Although we now accept the idea that DNA is responsible for our biological structure, it used to be unthinkable that a chemical molecule could hold enough information to build a human. In the early 1800s the leading scientists and philosophers believed that plants and animals had been specifically designed by a creator. Living things were just too complicated to have arisen by chance.

Charles Darwin is famous for challenging this view. In 1859 he published 'The Origin of Species', expressing that living things might appear to be designed, but were actually the result of natural selection. Darwin showed that living creatures evolve over several generations through a series of small changes. If the change helps that creature, it is likely to have many offspring with the same benefit. If the change harms the creature it may die before having any children of its own. Over time this produces plants and animals which are remarkably well adapted to their environments.

In the 1860s Darwin's ideas were supported when genetics was discovered by Gregor Mendel. He found that genes determine the characteristics a living thing will take. The genes are passed on to later generations, with a child taking genes from both its parents.

The great mystery was where and how is this information stored and so the race was on....

In 1962 Watson, Crick and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". Sadly Rosalind Franklin could not share in the prize. She had become ill with cancer in 1956, and died two years later, before the prize was awarded. Her essential role in the discovery of DNA's molecular structure was never disputed.

Max Perutz's team in the Cavendish grew rapidly after the discovery. The year before Watson's arrival only four molecular biologists were working in the Cavendish, but only ten years later this number had grown to forty! In 1962 the molecular biologists moved out of the Cavendish to form the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, chaired by Perutz until his retirement in 1979. At the start of 2001 there were over four hundred molecular biologists in the MRC Laboratory.

Mind you, if you think this only what happened, well you are pretty wrong, there is lots more to it, but I bet no one would be interested in an extremely long post. Hehe...so long...