James Watson
James Dewey Watson (born 6 April 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".
Watson has written many science books, including the textbook Molecular Biology of the Gene (1965) and his bestselling book The Double Helix (1968). Between 1988 and 1992, Watson was associated with the National Institutes of Health, helping to establish the Human Genome Project, which completed the task of mapping the human genome in 2003.
From 1968 Watson served as director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), greatly expanding its level of funding and research. At CSHL, he shifted his research emphasis to the study of cancer, along with making it a world-leading research center in molecular biology. In 1994, he started as president and served for 10 years. He was then appointed chancellor.
Life
Youth and Education
James Dewey Watson was born in 1928 in Chicago Illinois. He is the only son of James D. Watson, a businessman, and Jean Mitchell. James' entire childhood was spend in Chicago, where he attended the Horace Mann Grammar School for eight years, then another two years at South Shore High School.
In the summer of 1943, he entered the University of Chicago's experimental four year college on a tuition scholarship. In 1947 Watson received a B. Sc. degree in Zoology and later Fellowship for graduate study in Zoology at the Indiana University in Bloomington. He acquired his Ph. D. degree in Zoology in 1950. [[1]]
Career
Ever since he was young Watson had an interest in birds, which stirred him to learn genetics. He was greatly influenced by geneticists H. J. Muller and T. M. Sonneborn, who were faculty of Indiana's Bacteriology Department. With the guidance of S. E. Luria, Watson's Ph. D. thesis was a study of the effect of hard x-rays on bacteriophage multiplication. From 1950 to 1951 he worked in Copenhagen as a Merck Fellow of the National Research Council. While there he studied bacteria viruses, investigating the DNA of infecting viruses.
In the spring of 1951, Watson went to the Zoological Station at Naples and in late May met Maurice Wilkins. Wilkins showed him the x-ray diffraction pattern of crystalline DNA that he discovered. Watson then changed his research to structural chemistry of nucleic acid and proteins. He began working at Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in October 1952, where he met Francis Crick. The two men shared an interest in discovering the DNA structure and began their efforts together. All efforts were unsuccessful until March of 1953 when they used more experimental evidence and literature to come up with the double helix model. From 1953 to 1955 Watson was at the California Institute of Technology as Senior Research Fellow in Biology. Along with Alexander Rich, he studied RNA with x-ray diffraction. Watson worked again with Crick back at Cavendish from 1955-1956 publishing papers together on the principles of virus construction.
Watson then became a member of the Harvard Biology Department faculty as Assistant Professor in 1956, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1958 and then to Professor in 1961, where he researched the role of RNA in protein synthesis. Watson, Crick and Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.
Political incorrectness
He served until he resigned in 2007, after making comments on race and intelligence. In 2019, following the broadcast of a documentary in which Watson reiterated his views on race and genetics, CSHL revoked his honorary titles and severed all ties with him.
In 2014, Watson sold his Nobel Prize medal to raise money; part of the funds raised by the sale went to support scientific research. The medal sold at auction at Christie's in December 2014 for US$4.1 million. Watson intended to contribute the proceeds to conservation work in Long Island and to funding research at Trinity College, Dublin. He was the first living Nobel recipient to auction a medal. The medal was later returned to Watson by the purchaser, Alisher Usmanov.
Leftist Wikipedia gives a misleading description of earlier statements by Watson in 2000 on the pigment melanin, hormones, race, and associations.
Awards and honours (excerpt)
- Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, 1960
- Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences (2001)
- Copley Medal of the Royal Society, 1993
- CSHL Double Helix Medal Honoree, 2008
- Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry, 1960
- EMBO Membership in 1985
- Gairdner Foundation International Award, 2002
- Honorary Member of Royal Irish Academy, 2005
- Honorary Fellow, the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution
- Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), 2002
- Irish America Hall of Fame, inducted March 2011
- John J. Carty Award in molecular biology from the National Academy of Sciences
- Liberty Medal, 2000
- Lomonosov Gold Medal, 1994
- Lotos Club Medal of Merit, 2004
- National Medal of Science, 1997
- Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1962
- Othmer Gold Medal (2005)
- Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1977
- Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement, 1986