This article was originally published with the title “ The Three-Dimensional Structure of an Enzyme Molecule ” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 215 No. 5 (November 1966), p. 78 doi:10.1038 ...

They were hardly modest, these two brash young scientists who in 1953 declared to patrons of the Eagle Pub in Cambridge, England, that they had "found the secret of life." But James Watson and ...

(C) The subregions of a glycerophospholipid molecule; phosphatidylcholine is shown as an example. The hydrophilic head is composed of a choline structure (blue) and a phosphate (orange).

Scientists still needed to figure out this molecule's structure to be sure, and to understand how it worked. In 1948, Linus Pauling discovered that many proteins take the shape of an alpha helix ...