ABSTRACT
This chapter details the discovery of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and the start of a century-long quest to understand the source of hereditary material, and how it is passed on from mother to daughter cell. The chapter covers the research of Friedrich Miescher and his clever methods for isolating what he called nuclein (DNA) from white blood cells that he obtained from the pus on patients’ surgical bandages. There is discussion and analysis of why Miescher and his contemporaries, including Darwin and Mendel, failed to make the seemingly obvious connection between the discovery of DNA and genes, heredity, and evolution, and why it took another half century before the function of DNA was elucidated.
