The discovery of the monomers of nucleic acids, known as nucleotides, is attributed to several scientists over time rather than a single individual. Nucleotides are composed of a nitrogenous base, a sugar molecule, and a phosphate group. The concept of nucleotides began to take shape in the early 20th century.
In the 1930s, scientists like Phoebus Levene played a crucial role in identifying the components of nucleic acids. Levene proposed the tetranucleotide theory, suggesting that DNA was made up of four nucleotides in a fixed sequence. His work laid the groundwork for understanding the structure of DNA.
However, the complete understanding of nucleotides and their role in nucleic acids developed further with the work of Erwin Chargaff in the 1940s, who discovered the base pairing rules, and ultimately James Watson and Francis Crick, who elucidated the double helix structure of DNA in 1953. Their combined efforts and those of many others contributed significantly to the discovery and understanding of nucleotides as the monomers of nucleic acids.