EARLY THEORIES OF VIRUS STRUCTURE

This paper traces the beginnings of structural virology, from the early 1950's to the presentation of the Caspar-Klug theory of virus structure in 1962. It focuses primarily on the virus research of Francis Crick, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, Aaron Klug, and Donald Caspar. Collaborative efforts in X-ray crystallography and electron microscopy in combination with intellectual triggers from the Art world provided the soil from which the early theories of virus structure grew and matured.