The first successful test compilation and execution of a computer program using what became FORTRAN was run by Harlan Herrick at IBM. It took until 1957 to develop into a fully-operational, commercial product. As implied by its name (FORMula TRANslator), Fortran was designed as a high-level language for technical and scientific applications which primarily needed calculation, rather than working with characters. John Backus at IBM supervised the development of the programming language that would allow users to express their problems in commonly understood mathematical formulae. By 1958 the language was expanded to Fortran II, which included subroutines, functions and common blocks, and in 1962 IBM introduced the extended Fortran IV.

Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase published a report confirming DNA holds hereditary data. Their experiment used the T2 bacteriophage, which, like other viruses, is just a crystal of DNA and protein. It can reproduce when inside a bacterium such as E. coli. When the new T2 viruses are ready to leave the host E. coli cell (and go infect others), they burst the E. coli cell open, killing it (hence the name "bacteriophage"). Hershey and Chase were seeking an answer to the question, "Is it the viral DNA or viral protein coat (capsid) that is the viral genetic code material which gets injected into the E. coli?" Their results indicated that the viral DNA, not the protein, is its genetic code material.