Reading “The Edge of Objectivity” I was surprised that even though it has a detailed coverage of the history of the theory of evolution, it makes no mention of anyone by the name of “Crick” or “Watson”. So I looked up the history of DNA and discovered (amongst other things) that:

In 1927, Nikolai Koltsov proposed that inherited traits would be inherited via a “giant hereditary molecule” made up of “two mirror strands that would replicate in a semi-conservative fashion using each strand as a template”.

In 1928, Frederick Griffith in his experiment discovered that traits of the “smooth” form of Pneumococcus could be transferred to the “rough” form of the same bacteria by mixing killed “smooth” bacteria with the live “rough” form.

This system provided the first clear suggestion that DNA carries genetic information—the Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment—when Oswald Avery, along with coworkers Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty, identified DNA as the transforming principle in 1943.

DNA’s role in heredity was confirmed in 1952 when Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase in the Hershey–Chase experiment showed that DNA is the genetic material of the T2 phage.

Shouldn’t these people be better known?

Probably.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Koltsov

A very short Wiki article, that isn’t even labelled as a stub.

It is claimed he was poisoned by the KGB for proposing theories that would support the political position of fascists.

Bing doesn’t include Nikolai in the first four pages of a search on Koltsov.

Google does a little better, listing him at number 2, but maybe that’s just because Google does a better job of tracking where I have been visiting.

> Shouldn’t these people be better known?

But they didn’t write a best-selling novel.