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The question became how to study the DNA molecule. Biochemists believed that understanding its structure would reveal how the molecule coded the instructions for copying a new organism. They began taking X-ray images of crystals of DNA, believing that its crystallization meant it must have a regular structure. The pattern of the X-rays bouncing off atoms (a phenomenon called “diffraction”) gave information about their location in the molecule. One of the pioneers of this technique, called “X-ray crystallography,” was Linus Pauling, who worked at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. In the early 1950s Pauling, a prominent chemist doing molecular research in the States, seemed a likely candidate to unlock the mystery of life, since he had already concluded that the general shape of DNA must be a helix, or spiral.
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