James Watson, Nobel prize-winning DNA pioneer, dies aged 97

NEW YORK - Dr James Watson – the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks – has died, aged 97.

The eminent American biologist died on Nov 6 in hospice care on Long Island in New York, said the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career.

Dr Watson was one of the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 discovery of the double helix, a breakthrough made with research partner Francis Crick.

Along with Dr Crick and Dr Maurice Wilkins, Dr Watson shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for their momentous work that gave rise to modern biology and opened the door to insights including on genetic code and protein synthesis.

That ushered in a new era of modern life, allowing for revolutionary technologies in medicine, forensics and genetics, like criminal DNA testing or genetically manipulated plants.

Dr Watson was just 25 when he joined in on one of science’s greatest discoveries. He later went on to carry out groundbreaking work in cancer research and mapping the human genome.

His 1968 memoir The Double Helix was a best-seller praised for its breezy writing about fierce competition in the name of scientific advancement.

But on a personal level, Dr Watson was known as at best cantankerous and frank, at worst, mean and bigoted.

He routinely disparaged female scientists, including Dr Rosalind Franklin whose work on X-ray diffraction images of DNA offered the clue that made Dr Watson and Dr Crick’s modelling possible.

Dr Franklin, who worked with Dr Wilkins, did not receive the Nobel. She died in 1958, and the prestigious prize is neither shared by more than three people nor given posthumously.

Dr Watson faced few consequences for his behaviour until 2007, when he told a newspaper he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”.

He apologised – but was swiftly removed as his lab’s chancellor and his public image never recovered.

Twisting ladder

Born on April 6, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois, James Dewey Watson won a scholarship to the University of Chicago when he was 15. He received a doctorate in zoology in 1950 from Indiana University in Bloomington, and embarked on an academic path that took him to European universities including Cambridge, where he met Dr Crick and began a historic partnership.

Working with X-ray images obtained by Dr Franklin and Dr Wilkins, researchers at King’s College in London, Dr Watson and Dr Crick started parsing out the double helix.

Their first serious effort came up short. But their second attempt – an image of Dr Franklin’s proved key, and the duo had it without her knowledge – resulted in them presenting the double-helical configuration.

The now iconic depiction resembles a twisting ladder.

Their model also showed how the DNA molecule could duplicate itself, thus answering a fundamental question in the field of genetics.

Dr Watson and Dr Crick published their findings in the British journal Nature in 1953 to great acclaim.

Dr Watson taught at Harvard for 15 years before becoming director of what today is known as the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, which he transformed into a global hub of molecular biology research.

From 1988 to 1992, Dr Watson was one of the directors of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, where he oversaw the mapping of the genes in the human chromosomes.

Dr Watson had two sons, Rufus and Duncan, with his wife Elizabeth.

And he received honorary degrees from dozens of universities, wrote many books and was heavily decorated. Actor Jeff Goldblum played him in a BBC-produced film about the double helix.

On Nov 7, his former lab commended his “extraordinary contributions”.

But the institution had ultimately severed ties with the scientist, including stripping him of his emeritus status – in a PBS documentary that aired in 2019, Dr Watson once again made “reprehensible” remarks. AFP