fake imagesAmerican scientist James Watson, Nobel Prize winner and one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, has died at the age of 97.
In one of the greatest breakthroughs of the 20th century, he identified the double helix structure of DNA in 1953 along with a British scientist, Francis Crick, laying the groundwork for rapid advances in molecular biology.
But his reputation and position were seriously damaged by his comments on race and sex. On a television show, he referenced a controversial view that genes cause differences between blacks and whites on IQ tests.
Watson’s death was confirmed to the BBC by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he worked and researched for decades.
Watson shared the Nobel Prize in 1962 with Maurice Wilkins and Crick for the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.
“We have discovered the secret of life,” they said at the time.
His later comments about race led him to say that he felt excluded by the scientific community.
In 2007, the scientist, who worked at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory, told the Times newspaper that he was “inherently pessimistic about Africa’s prospects” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, while all the evidence says they are not.”
The comments led to him losing his job as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.
His additional comments in 2019, when he once again suggested a link between race and intelligence, led the lab to strip him of his honorary titles of chancellor emeritus, Oliver R Grace professor emeritus and honorary trustee.
“Dr. Watson’s statements are reprehensible and are not supported by science,” the laboratory said in a statement.
DNA was discovered in 1869, but researchers had yet to discover its structure, and it took until 1943 before scientists realized that DNA made up the genetic material of cells.
Working with images obtained by King’s College researcher Rosalind Franklin, without her knowledge, Crick and Watson were able to build a physical model of the molecule.
Watson sold his Nobel gold medal at auction for $4.8 million (£3.6 million) in 2014, saying he was giving up the medal because he felt excluded by the scientific community after his comments on race.
A Russian billionaire bought it for $4.8 million and quickly returned it.
Watson was born in Chicago in April 1928, the son of Jean and James, descendants of English, Scottish and Irish settlers.
He won a scholarship to study at the University of Chicago when he was 15 years old.
There, he became interested in the new technique of diffraction, in which X-rays bounced off atoms to reveal their internal structures.
To continue his research into DNA structures, he went to Cambridge, where he met Crick, with whom he began building large-scale models of possible DNA structures.
Later, after his scientific discovery, Watson and his wife, Elizabeth, moved to Harvard, where he became a professor of biology. The couple had two children, one of whom suffered from schizophrenia.
In 1968, he took over Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in upstate New York, a former institution he is credited with turning into one of the world’s leading scientific research institutes.
