James Watson in 2011WIKIMEDIA, NHGRI/CSHL
James Watson shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for determining the double-helix structure of DNA. Watson, 86, sold his Nobel medal to an anonymous bidder last week (December 4) at Christie’s auction house in New York City for $4.1 million. This was the highest price ever paid for a Nobel and the first time a living scientist has sold one of the prizes.
Watson has expressed controversial opinions on race and gender, and in 2007 the molecular biologist retired from his post as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York after an uproar over comments he made to the British newspaper The Sunday Times. He suggested that black people were less intelligent than white ...
