battledore (plural battledores) 1  A game played with a shuttlecock and rackets (properly battledore and shuttlecock); a forerunner of badminton. 2  The racket used in this game. ( 3 obsolete) A child's hornbook for learning the alphabet. ( obsolete) A bat or beetle used in washing clothes.
Watson is a U.S. molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953 with Francis Crick. In 1998, the Modern Library placed The Double Helix at number 7 on its list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the 20th century.
A brief treatment of DNA follows. For full treatment, see genetics: DNA and the genetic code. The chemical DNA was first discovered in 1869, but its role in genetic inheritance was not demonstrated until 1943. In 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick determined that the structure of DNA is a double-helix polymer, a spiral consisting of two DNA strands wound around each other.