Friedrich Miescher

Johannes Friedrich Miescher was a Swiss physician and biologist, as well as the first person to discover nucleic acid. In 1869, at the young age of twenty-five, Miescher discovered DNA while studying leokocytes on pus-ridden bandages. After several experiments, he found a way to separate the nuclei from its cytoplasm, extracting a substance from the former. Miescher referred to the substance as nuclein, which eventually became known as nucleic acid.