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.
Important contributions and data from Wilkins, Franklin (obtained via Max Perutz) and colleagues in Cambridge enabled Watson and Crick to propose a double-helix model for DNA. The third and longest phase of Wilkins' work on DNA took place from 1953 onwards. Here Wilkins led a major project at King's College, London, to test, verify and make significant corrections to the DNA model proposed by Watson and Crick and to study the structure of RNA.