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James D. Watson, the brilliant but controversial American biologist whose 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA, the molecule of heredity, ushered in the era of genetics and laid the foundation for the biotechnological revolution of the late 20th century, has died aged 97.
His death was confirmed by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, where he worked for many years. The New York Times reported that Watson died this week at a hospice on Long Island.
In later years, Watson's reputation was tarnished by comments about genetics and race, which caused him to be ostracized by the scientific community.
Even at a younger age, he was known not only for his science, but also for his writing and being a terrible child (including his willingness to use the data of other scientists to advance his career).
His 1968 memoirs. Double helixIt was a colorful and casual account of how he and British physicist Francis Crick were the first to determine the three-dimensional shape of DNA. This achievement earned the duo a share of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine and ultimately led to the development of genetic engineering, gene therapy, and other DNA-based drugs and technologies.
Crick complained that the book was a “gross invasion of my privacy,” and another colleague, Maurice Wilkins, objected to what he called the “distorted and unfavorable image of scientists” as ambitious schemers willing to deceive colleagues and competitors in order to make a discovery.
Additionally, Watson and Crick, who conducted their research at the University of Cambridge in England, were widely criticized for using raw data collected by X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin to construct their model of DNA—as two intertwined ladders—without fully acknowledging her contribution. As Watson put it double helix, scientific research feels the “conflicting pulls of ambition and a sense of fair play.”
A Pennsylvania child with a rare genetic disease has been successfully treated with a customized therapy using gene-editing technology developed in part by a Vancouver company, raising hopes that it could be used for a variety of diseases.
In 2007, Watson again caused widespread outrage when he told the Times of London that he believed tests showed African intelligence was “not quite… the same as ours.”
Accused of promoting long-discredited racist theories, he was soon forced to resign from his post as Chancellor of New York's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). Although he later apologized, he made similar comments in a 2019 documentary.
Modeled spiral staircase
James Dewey Watson was born in Chicago on April 6, 1928 and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1947 with a degree in zoology. He received his PhD from Indiana University, where he worked in genetics. In 1951 he joined the Cambridge Cavendish Laboratory, where he met Crick and began research into the structural chemistry of DNA.
The double helix opened the door to the genetic revolution. In the structure proposed by Crick and Watson, the steps of the spiral staircase were made up of pairs of chemicals called nucleotides or bases. As they noted at the end of their 1953 paper, “It has not escaped our notice that the specific mating we have postulated immediately suggests a possible mechanism for copying genetic material.”
This proposal, often called the greatest understatement in the history of biology, meant that the base-helix structure provided a mechanism by which genetic information could be copied exactly from one generation to the next. This understanding led to the discovery of genetic engineering and many other DNA techniques.
After DNA research, Watson and Crick parted ways. Watson was only 25 years old at the time, and although he never made a single scientific discovery approaching the significance of the double helix, he remained a scientific force.
“He had to figure out what to do with his life after achieving what he achieved at such a young age,” biologist Mark Ptashne, who met Watson in the 1960s and remained friends, told Reuters in a 2012 interview. “He figured out how to do what was in his power.”
That strength lay in playing the “tough Irishman,” as Ptashne put it, and becoming one of the leaders of the American leap to the forefront of molecular biology. Watson joined the biology department at Harvard University in 1956.
From 1988 to 1992, Watson led US federal efforts to determine the detailed composition of human DNA. He created the project's enormous investment in ethical research simply by announcing it at a press conference. He later said it was “probably the wisest thing I've done in the last decade.”
In 2000, Watson was at the White House to announce that the federal project had achieved a major goal: a “working draft” of the human genome, essentially a roadmap for about 90 percent of human genes.
In 2007, researchers presented Watson with a detailed description of his own genome. This was one of the first human genomes to be deciphered.
