​In the early 1900’s the scientific field of molecular biology was a complete mystery to scientists, the name molecular biology wasn’t even coined until the year 1938 by Warren Weaver. Scientists at the time had no explanation for how genetic information dictated the formation of proteins in a biological system or even which biological molecule contained the genetic information. Francis Crick and James Watson were two scientists who were fixated on answering these questions. By the year 1953, they discovered that genetic information was encoded by DNA in a double helical structure. Shortly after, in 1957 they presented the relationship between DNA, RNA, and proteins called “the central dogma of molecular biology”. This explained how genetic information in the form of nucleotide sequences in DNA are transcribed into RNA to be later be translated into functional proteins. This discovery was a major breakthrough in molecular biology and allowed the field to progress heavily.

References:

http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2007/01/central-dogma-of-molecular-biology.html