60 years ago today.....

[BallAquatics]

The scientific journal Nature, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_(journal)), published a paper by James Watson, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson), and Francis Crick, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Crick),  deducing the double helix structure of DNA. This has been described by some other biologists and Nobel laureates as the most important scientific discovery of the 20th century.  Watson, Crick, and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962.

Dennis

[BillT]

Also on this day in 2003, the human genome sequence was declared complete.

Certainly to a biologist this was the most important discovery of the last century, however I suppose physicists might want to argue for relativity or quantum physics.