Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Crick was 35 years old, Watson just 22. Crick had begun his career as a physicist, then moved to biochemistry; Watson began as an ornithologist, then moved on to study viruses. The breakthrough came as Watson studied the x-ray crystallography image of the DNA molecule. This was very much the dawn of biotechnology . . ." [Furtado: 1001 Days]