About the exhibition

About DNA 50
On the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the double helical structure of DNA, the achievement is rightly being proclaimed as a milestone to be marked and honoured, as a defining moment in science and as the threshold to a whole new generation of understanding what makes us tick. It is particularly appropriate to be celebrating it here at the Wellcome Trust, partly because the Trust has been such a major player in the Human Genome Project, and partly because we are now the custodians of the archive of Francis Crick, one of the key protagonists in the story. The success of the genome project was due in no small part to the work of our latest Nobel laureate, Sir John Sulston, and it is a great delight to welcome him to open the ‘Four Plus: Writing DNA’ exhibition and also to announce that he has agreed to donate to us his own papers, to be made available for public access alongside Crick’s.

DNA has everything – it’s good science, it’s a good story, and it has a visual image that has become an icon of our time. It can capture people’s interest from different angles and so here at the Trust we are celebrating the anniversary with a multifaceted exhibition spread across our two buildings on either side of Euston Road. In the Wellcome Library, in the Wellcome Building, you can see some of the original letters and papers from Crick’s archive, including a draft of the famous 1953 Nature article and letters between Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins. You will also see, there and elsewhere in the building, as well as in the TwoTen Gallery, works by ten contemporary artists which respond to DNA. These two complementary strands of our own helix join the many other activities that are going on around the world this spring, to mark the anniversary and to remind us all of the significance of the discovery and the changes it has brought to our understanding of ourselves.

David Pearson
Librarian, Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine

Black and white photograph from ‘young admirer’ (David Aron), 22 October 1962. The photograph was taken immediately prior to Crick delivering the Franklin I Harris Memorial Lecture (‘The Nature of the Genetic Code’) on 9 April 1962, at Mount Zion Hospital, San Francisco.

Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine