In the early 1950s the prevailing view was that the genes in a chromosome are discrete entities, indivisible by genetic recombination and arranged like beads on a string. During 1955 to 1959, Benzer performed genetic recombination experiments using rII mutants of bacteriophage T4. He found that, on the basis of recombination tests, the sites of mutation could be mapped in a linear order. This result provided evidence for the key idea that the gene has a linear structure equivalent to a length of DNA with many sites that can independently mutate.