The Scientist Who Read God's Handiwork

On April 14, 2003, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium announced that thirteen years of painstaking work had reached its goal: scientists had successfully mapped the 3. 1 billion base pairs of human DNA. Researchers from twenty centers across six countries — the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany, and China — had collaborated on what Francis Collins, the project's director since 1993, would later call deciphering "the language of God."…