Episodes

6 episodes in this season

Vitruvian Man

60 min

Copernicus

60 min

The Crucial Experiment, Isaac Newton

60 min

The Rose Diagram, Florence Nightingale

60 min

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DNA, James Watson and Francis Crick

60 min

Pioneer Plaque

60 min

The Beauty of Diagrams

TV Series

20101h

Documentary

Now playing

DNA, James Watson and Francis Crick

Season 1 · Episode 5 · Dec 16, 2010

In the last hundred years, one diagrammatic image stands above all others. It represents a scientific breakthrough that has been voted the most significant in the 20th century, more important than penicillin or the first working computer. The double helix shows us what the structure of our DNA looks like. Francis Crick and James Watson announced their discovery in Nature magazine in April 1953, and their article included a diagram of the structure by Odile Crick. The image she drew has become so well known and loved that we now find it in a whole range of consumer products - there are double helix ties, dogs chews and even a perfume. So has the image of the double helix become so divorced from its original scientific setting that no one knows what it really is or what it stands for?

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The Beauty of Diagrams

TV Series

20101h

Documentary

Now playing

DNA, James Watson and Francis Crick

Season 1 · Episode 5 · Dec 16, 2010

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