In the mid 1950s, Francis Crick and James Watson attempted to explain the structure of spherical viruses. They hypothesized that spherical viruses consist of 60 identical equivalently situated subunits. Such an arrangement has icosahedral symmetry. Subsequent biophysical and electron micrographic data suggested that many viruses had >60 subunits. Drawing inspiration from architecture, Donald Caspar and Aaron Klug discovered a solution to the problem - they proposed that spherical viruses were structured like miniature geodesic domes.

中文翻译：

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历史回顾：病毒，晶体和测地穹顶。

1950年代中期，弗朗西斯·克里克（Francis Crick）和詹姆斯·沃森（James Watson）试图解释球形病毒的结构。他们假设球形病毒由60个相同的等价亚基组成。这样的布置具有二十面体对称性。随后的生物物理和电子显微数据表明，许多病毒具有> 60个亚基。从建筑学中汲取灵感，唐纳德·卡斯帕（Donald Caspar）和亚伦·克鲁格（Aaron Klug）找到了解决该问题的方法，他们提出球形病毒的结构类似于微型测地线圆顶。