Yathish Achar

Most experiments fail. What defines a researcher is not avoiding failure, but staying long enough to understand it. On a sunny afternoon of June 28, 1968, in Berkeley, a scientist was setting up an experiment to understand why DNA rings isolated from bacterial cells were always negatively supercoiled. By the late 1960s, it was fairly well accepted that DNA in a living organism exists in three supercoiled forms: negatively supercoiled, positively supercoiled, and relaxed DNA. The major...

A PhD tests patience more than intelligence, offering neither comfort nor clarity along the way. But in the slow grind of failed experiments and small victories, the journey shapes someone who can carry uncertainty without breaking. In the end, what endures through the process matters far more than the destination - that is the quiet transformation a PhD leaves behind. Let me tell you a story I heard a long time ago. Up in the mountains there was a monk, famous for teaching meditation and...

I began writing this article after hearing the news of James D. Watson’s death on November 6th, 2025, which made me revisit the story that first introduced many of us to scientific discovery. This article is not about his unusual journey or his bold and controversial personality. Instead, it is about why The Double Helix remains one of the most memorable and dramatic accounts in biology. Despite its flaws, the book changed how the world views science- showing it as emotional, competitive,...