Over a decade ago, I was sitting in a college math physics course and my professor spelt out an idea that kind of blew my mind.

This mathematical tool—named the Fourier transform, after 18th-century French physicist and mathematician Joseph Fourier—was even used by James Watson and Francis Crick to decode the double helix structure of DNA from the X-ray patterns produced by Rosalind Franklin...

Over a decade ago, I was sitting in a college math physics course and my professor spelt out an idea that kind of blew my mind.

This mathematical tool—named the Fourier transform, after 18th-century French physicist and mathematician Joseph Fourier—was even used by James Watson and Francis Crick to decode the double helix structure of DNA from the X-ray patterns produced by Rosalind Franklin...