Francis Crick and James Watson: And the Building Blocks of Life (Oxford Portraits in Science)

Good science book on the subject, very thorough biographies of both Crick and Watson. Text is a little dry, but the occasioanl picture perks it up. Illustrations are in black and white. I would recommend this book to the 7th grade up, and will include a recommendation for the teachers as well.

The names of James Watson and Francis Crick are bound together forever because the scientific discovery they made was truly a joint enterprise. As Edward Edelson reveals in this intriguing biography, Watson and Crick were the first to describe the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, the molecule that carries our genes and determines everything from the color of our eyes to the shape of our fingernails. Even though Watson and Crick's collaboration lasted only a few years, their achievement was enough to tie their names together forever in the history of science and to establish a firm footing for what was then a radical new branch of science: molecular biology. In doing so, they paved the way for the early detection of genetic diseases such as sickle-cell anemia, and for new scientific leaps such as animal cloning.

Describes the collaboration of Watson and Crick in the effort to discover DNA.

Contents 6 Chapter 1. A Story of Two Men and a New Science 10 Chapter 2. Dr. Watson Meets Mr. Crick 15 Chapter 3. The Road to DNA 28 Sidebar: Mendelian Genetics 34 Chapter 4. The Emergence of Nucleic Acids 37 Sidebar: The Waring Blendor 50 Chapter 5. The Emergence of the Double Helix 52 Chapter 6. How DNA Works 71 Sidebar: Solving the Sickle-Cell Puzzle 89 Chapter 7. Watson and the Human Genome Project 92 Sidebar: The First Cloned Mammals 103 Chronology 105 Further Reading 107 Index 109 A 109 B 109 C 109 D 109 E 110 F 110 G 110 H 110 I 110 J 110 K 110 L 110 M 110 N 110 O 110 P 110 R 110 S 110 T 111 U 111 V 111 W 111 X 111 Z 111