Liquid crystalline substances from virus infected plants.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Bawden, Pirie, Bernal, Fankuchen. The authors isolated and crystallized tobacco mosaic virus, finding for the first time that a virus contained nucleic acids, when others claimed that it just contained proteins. They showed that the virus molecules were anisometric and consist of ribonucleoprotein.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)