V.S. Ramachandran writes in John Brockman's EDGE zine:
Everyone knows that [Francis] Crick (along with his colleague James Watson) unraveled the double helical structure of the DNA molecule but not everyone appreciates the even greater contributions he made soon afterwards. He went on to decipher the genetic code (three nucleotides coding for an amino acid; the mechanism of DNA replication, the transcription of the code by mRNA and its subsequent translation into amino acid sequences mediated by transfer RNA) With these achievements in place Crick soon came to be regarded as the founder of the new science of molecular biology and occupied the same place in twentieth century Science as Darwin did in the 19th century.
