The encompassing science of molecular biology once had a surprisingly local bias. For a generation following World War II, the Medical Research Council Laboratory at Cambridge was the undisputed focal point of the discipline. Crick and Watson, Kendrew and Perutz, Sanger and Brenner did the work that made them famous at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Free School Lane, Cambridge. Soraya de Chadrevian's important new study is the first to examine the development of molecular biology and its place on the postwar governmental agenda in the context of this remarkable institution.