DNA Pioneer James Watson Dies at 97: Co-Discoverer of the Double Helix Passes Away

(AP).- James D. Watson, renowned for his co-discovery of DNA’s double helix structure in 1953, which sparked a revolution in fields ranging from medicine and crime fighting to genealogy and ethics, has passed away at the age of 97.

The breakthrough came when Watson, a daring 24-year-old from Chicago, along with his colleagues, uncovered that deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, forms a double helix, resembling a long, gently twisting ladder. This discovery was achieved in partnership with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, leading to their shared Nobel Prize in 1962.

This revelation was monumental, instantly clarifying how genetic information is stored and how cells replicate their DNA by unzipping the double helix during cell division.

The image of the double helix has since become an instantly recognizable symbol of science, even appearing in works by Salvador Dalí and on a British postage stamp.

Watson’s discovery paved the way for modern advancements such as genetic manipulation of organisms, gene therapy for treating diseases, identification of human remains and suspects through DNA samples, and tracing genealogical trees. However, it also raised numerous ethical questions about whether genetic information should be altered for aesthetic reasons or in ways that could affect future generations.

“Francis Crick and I made the discovery of the century, that was pretty clear,” Watson once said. He later noted, “There was no way we could have foreseen the explosive impact of the double helix on science and society.”

While Watson never made another laboratory discovery as significant, he wrote influential textbooks and a bestselling memoir, and played a crucial role in the Human Genome Project. He nurtured young, brilliant scientists and leveraged his prestige and connections to shape scientific policy.

Watson passed away in a hospice after a short illness, his son announced today. His former research lab confirmed that he had died the day before.

“He never stopped fighting for people suffering from diseases,” said Duncan Watson about his father.

Watson’s initial motivation to support the genome project was personal: his son Rufus was hospitalized with a possible diagnosis of schizophrenia, and Watson believed that understanding the full DNA sequence was crucial to potentially helping his son.

In 2007, Watson drew unwanted attention when he was quoted in The Sunday Times of London expressing pessimism about the future of Africa because, he believed, social policies were based on an assumption of equal intelligence, which he claimed was contradicted by “all the testing.” He apologized, but following international uproar, he was suspended from his administrative role at the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, where he had held various leadership positions for nearly four decades. He retired a week later.

In a 2019 television documentary, Watson was asked if his views had changed. “Not at all,” he replied. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory subsequently stripped him of several honorary titles, stating his remarks were “reprehensible” and “without scientific foundation.”

Watson’s scientific achievements and controversial comments created a complex legacy.

In 2019, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, commented that Watson had exhibited “an unfortunate penchant for making inflammatory and offensive remarks, particularly later in his career. His outbursts, especially regarding race, were profoundly unfortunate and hurtful. I wish Jim’s views on society and humanity had matched his scientific brilliance.”

Long before these controversies, Watson was critical of political correctness.

“A good number of scientists are not only closed-minded and boring but just plain dumb,” he wrote in “The Double Helix,” his successful 1968 book about the DNA discovery.

Watson emphasized the importance of avoiding dull people in science: “Never do anything that bores you. … If you can’t stand being with your real colleagues (including your scientific competitors), leave science. … To achieve great success, a scientist must be prepared to get into deep trouble.”

It was in the fall of 1951 when the tall, skinny Watson—who had already earned his Ph.D. at the age of 23—arrived at the University of Cambridge in Britain, where he met Crick. A biographer of Watson later described their meeting as “intellectual love at first sight.” Crick wrote that their partnership thrived partly because both men shared “a certain youthful arrogance, a ruthlessness, and an impatience with sloppy thinking.”

Together, they set out to decipher DNA’s structure, assisted by X-ray research conducted by their colleague Rosalind Franklin and her graduate student Raymond Gosling. Watson was later criticized for a disparaging portrayal of Franklin in “The Double Helix,” and today she is regarded as a prominent scientist whose contributions were overlooked. (She passed away in 1958).

Watson and Crick built models akin to Tinker Toys to elucidate the molecule’s structure. One Saturday morning in 1953, after manipulating carefully cut cardboard pieces representing DNA molecule fragments, Watson suddenly realized how these pieces could form the “rungs” of a double helix ladder.

His first reaction: “It’s beautiful.”

After the discovery, Watson spent two years at the California Institute of Technology and then joined the faculty at Harvard in 1955. Before leaving Harvard in 1976, he essentially created the university’s molecular biology program, recalled scientist Mark Ptashne in a 1999 interview.

Watson became the director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1968, its president in 1994, and its chancellor ten years later. He transformed the Long Island lab into a vibrant, incredibly important educational hub for scientists and non-scientists alike, focusing research on cancer and instilling a sense of excitement while raising substantial funds.

“He turned the lab into a vibrant and incredibly important hub,” said Ptashne. “It was one of Jim’s miracles: a more rumpled, less polished, and less compliant person than you could imagine.”

From 1988 to 1992, Watson headed the federal project to identify the detailed composition of human DNA. He secured the substantial investment in ethical research that the project required simply by announcing it at a press conference. He later stated that it was “probably the smartest decision I’ve made in the past decade.”

Watson was present at the White House in 2000 for the announcement that the federal project had completed a major milestone: a “working draft” of the human genome, essentially a roadmap for about 90 percent of human genes.

In 2007, researchers presented Watson with the detailed description of his own genome. He was one of the first individuals to have his genome fully sequenced.

Watson knew that genetic research could yield results that might make some people uncomfortable. In 2007, he wrote that when scientists identify genetic variants that predispose people to crime or significantly affect intelligence, these findings should be disclosed rather than silenced for political correctness.

James Dewey Watson was born in Chicago on April 6, 1928, into “a family that believed in books, birds, and the Democratic Party,” as he once described. From his father, a birdwatcher, he inherited an interest in ornithology and a disdain for explanations not grounded in reason or science.

Watson was a precocious child who loved to read and studied books like “The World Telegraph Almanac of Facts.” He entered the University of Chicago on a scholarship at 15, graduated at 19, and earned his Ph.D. in zoology from Indiana University three years later.

He became interested in genetics at 17 after reading a book stating that genes were the essence of life.

“I thought: ‘Well, if the gene is the essence of life, I want to know more about it,’” he later recalled. “And that was crucial because otherwise, I would have spent my life studying birds and no one would have heard of me.”

At that time, it was not clear that genes were made of DNA, at least in any life form other than bacteria. But Watson traveled to Europe to study the biochemistry of nucleic acids like DNA. At a conference in Italy, Watson saw an X-ray image indicating that DNA could form crystals.

“Suddenly I got excited about chemistry,” Watson wrote in “The Double Helix.” If genes could crystallize, “they must have a regular structure that could be solved simply.”

“A possible key to the secret of life was impossible to get out of my mind,” he remembered.

In the decades following his discovery, Watson’s fame endured. Apple Computer used his image in an advertising campaign. At conferences, graduate students who hadn’t even been born when he was working in Cambridge would elbow each other and whisper, “There’s Watson! There’s Watson!” They got him to autograph napkins or copies of “The Double Helix.”

In 2018, a journalist asked Watson if any building at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was named after him. Watson replied that there wasn’t: “I don’t need a building with my name. I have the double helix.”

His comments on race in 2007 were not the first time Watson stirred controversy with his remarks. In a speech in 2000, he suggested that sexual desire might be linked to skin color. He had previously told a newspaper that if a gene governing sexuality were discovered and could be detected in the womb, a woman who did not want to have a gay child should be allowed to have an abortion.

More than half a century after winning the Nobel, Watson auctioned his gold medal in 2014. The winning bid of $4.7 million set a record for a Nobel. Ultimately, the medal was returned to Watson.

Watson’s two co-recipients of the Nobel Prize, Crick and Wilkins, passed away in 2004.