Co-discoverer of DNA double helix brought genetics to forefront of scientific research
Race comments spark backlash
Later in his life, Watson was condemned for derogatory comments about women, black people, homosexuals and the obese. It has been criticized as sexist for downplaying Franklin’s role in the discovery of DNA.
In 2014, he said he would sell his Nobel Prize medal because his controversial remarks had made him an outcast in the scientific community. Watson also said he needed the money and would donate some of the proceeds to scientific research. The medal was sold at auction for $4.8 million.
Watson’s later remarks about race and intelligence caused a huge backlash.Credit: access point
“I have been kicked out of corporate boards because I am not a ‘person,’ so I have no income other than my academic income,” he said. Financial Times.
The recipient of the medal was Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who later returned the medal to Watson for his contributions to science.
James Dewey Watson was born in Chicago on April 6, 1928. He won a scholarship to the University of Chicago and graduated with a degree in zoology in 1947 at the age of 19. Three years later, he received his doctorate from Indiana University.
“Until you graduate high school, there is little to gain from questioning what your teacher wants you to learn,” he said in his 2007 book. Avoid Boring People: Lessons from Life in Science. “Save your flights of rebellion for when authority isn’t holding you by the throat.”
‘The secret of life’
He spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher in Copenhagen before attending a symposium in Naples in 1953, where he saw Wilkins’ X-ray diffraction results using crystal DNA. Watson later worked at the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, focusing on nucleic acids and proteins, where he joined forces with Crick to solve the problem of the structure of DNA.
On February 28, 1953, Crick announced at the Eagle bar in Cambridge, England that they had “found the secret of life”. Earlier that day, the duo had uncovered the self-replicating double helix.
“This structure has novel features that are of great biological interest,” Watson and Crick wrote in a letter in April 1953. Nature. This was considered one of the greatest shortcomings in science. Crick and Wilkins died in 2004.
Watson (right) with Francis Crick at Cambridge University in the 1950s.Credit: access point
Watson’s description of the discovery in 1969 was published under the title: Double Helix He was criticized for his treatment of Franklin and statements about the selfish motives of scientists.
Watson joined Harvard University’s biology department and became a professor in 1961. He resigned in 1976 to work as director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a biomedical research and education center in New York. He served as president of the center from 1994 to 2003, when he became chancellor, according to the lab’s website.
From 1989 to 1992, he served as director of the National Human Genome Research Center at the National Institutes of Health. He pioneered efforts to map the genetic code of the human species, enabling the development of tests and potential treatments for inherited diseases.
public reaction
Watson was strongly criticized for comments he made in a London newspaper in 2007. Sunday Times about the intelligence of black people, implying that they were genetically inferior.
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“All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, when all the tests say it is not.” Although he hopes everyone is equal, “people who have to deal with black employees don’t think it’s right.”
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory suspended Watson as chancellor and his book tour in the United Kingdom was cancelled. Watson announced the following week that he was retiring from his position in Cold Spring.
“I’m ashamed of what happened,” he said in response to the public outcry. “More importantly, I can’t understand how I could say the quote I said. I can definitely understand why people who read those words reacted the way they did.” He added: “Such a belief has no scientific basis.”
The Lab regained their title in 2019 after further comments regarding race and intelligence.
Watson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, received honorary degrees from more than a dozen universities, and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
He was married to Elizabeth Lewis and had two sons: Rufus and Duncan.
Bloomberg
