James Watson, one of the 20th century’s most famous scientists, passed away on Thursday (November 6). He was 97.
Watson was best known for his co-discovery of the DNA double helix along with biophysicist Francis Crick in 1953.1-3 Watson met Crick while working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish laboratory in 1951, a year after earning his PhD from Indiana University. The pair quickly bonded over their love for DNA.
To build their model, Watson and Crick used the X-ray crystallography data that Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, researchers at King’s College London, had generated. In 1962, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this discovery—Franklin had succumbed to ovarian cancer in 1958, and the prize is not awarded posthumously. Watson’s book, “The Double Helix,” revealed Franklin’s critical role in the breakthrough, though reviewers noted that he painted her in a demeaning and sexist manner.4
Despite this, Watson was supportive of female scientists, shared Nancy Hopkins, a molecular biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the New York Times. Hopkins was one of the budding molecular biologists whom Watson mentored during his professorship at Harvard University from 1955 to 1976.
But Watson's prejudiced remarks eventually caught up with him. In 2007, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories (CSHL), an institution which Watson had led since 1968, terminated his position due to the comments he made on the genetic basis of the difference in intelligence between races. Watson apologized and retained some of his honorary titles with the institution. However, when he revealed in the 2019 documentary “American Masters: Decoding Watson” that his views had not changed, CSHL revoked these titles too.
“Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory acknowledges and appreciates Dr. Watson’s substantial scientific legacy,” the institution’s board of trustees wrote in a statement. “Nonetheless, the statements he made in the documentary are completely and utterly incompatible with our mission, values, and policies, and require the severing of any remaining vestiges of his involvement.”
Nathaniel Comfort, a historian at Johns Hopkins University who is working on a biography of Watson, thinks that Watson’s belief in genetic determinism, the idea that a person's DNA controls all their traits, was at the heart of his sexist and racist views.
Comfort recently told the National Public Radio, “DNA made him, and DNA unmade him.”
- Watson JD, Crick FHC. Molecular structure of nucleic acids: A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature. 1953;171:737-738.
- Wilkins MHF, et al. Molecular structure of nucleic acids: Molecular structure of deoxypentose nucleic acids. Nature. 1953;171:738-740.
- Franklin RE, Gosling RG. Molecular configuration in sodiumthymonucleate. Nature. 1953;171:740-741.
- Watson JD. The double helix: A personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. Atheneum; 1968.
