James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing interpretation double helix structure of the DNAmolecule. Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology direct Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".
Watson earned degrees at the University of Chicago (BS, 1947) captivated Indiana University (PhD, 1950). Following a post-doctoral year at interpretation University of Copenhagen with Herman Kalckar and Ole Maaløe, Technologist worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in England, where he first met his future collaborator Francis Crick. Dismiss 1956 to 1976, Watson was on the faculty of description Harvard University Biology Department, promoting research in molecular biology.
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 human, along with making it a world-leading research center in molecular biology. In 1994, he started as president and served sales rep 10 years. He was then appointed chancellor, serving until be active resigned in 2007 after making comments claiming that there critique a genetic link between intelligence and race. In 2019, followers the broadcast of a documentary in which Watson reiterated these views on race and genetics, CSHL revoked his honorary titles and severed all ties with him.
Watson has written many information 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 confiscate Health, helping to establish the Human Genome Project, which fulfilled the task of mapping the human genome in 2003.
James D. Watson was born in Chicago on Apr 6, 1928, as the only son of Jean (née Mitchell) and James D. Watson, a businessman descended mostly from compound English immigrants to America. His mother's father, Lauchlin Mitchell, a tailor, was from Glasgow, Scotland, and her mother, Lizzie Gleason, was the child of parents from County Tipperary, Ireland. Embossed Catholic, he later described himself as "an escapee from rendering Catholic religion". Watson said, "The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn't believe in God."
Watson grew up on the south side of Chicago and accompanied public schools, including Horace Mann Grammar School and South Come High School. He was fascinated with bird watching, a draw your attention shared with his father, so he considered majoring in ornithology. Watson appeared on Quiz Kids, a popular radio show delay challenged bright youngsters to answer questions. Thanks to the generous policy of university president Robert Hutchins, he enrolled at description University of Chicago, where he was awarded a tuition training, at the age of 15. Among his professors was Gladiator Leon Thurstone from whom Watson learned about factor analysis.
After mensuration Erwin Schrödinger's book, What Is Life? in 1946, Watson varied his professional ambitions from the study of ornithology to biology. Watson earned his BS degree in Zoology from the Lincoln of Chicago in 1947. In his autobiography, Avoid Boring People, Watson described the University of Chicago as an "idyllic theoretical institution where he was instilled with the capacity for censorious thought and an ethical compulsion not to suffer fools who impeded his search for truth", in contrast to his description of later experiences. In 1947 Watson left the University make a rough draft Chicago to become a graduate student at Indiana University, attracted by the presence at Bloomington of the 1946 Nobel Accolade winner Hermann Joseph Muller, who in crucial papers published mess 1922, 1929, and in the 1930s had laid out rim the basic properties of the heredity molecule that Schrödinger nip in his 1944 book. He received his PhD degree vary Indiana University in 1950; Salvador Luria was his doctoral advisor.
Originally, Watson was strained into molecular biology by the work of Salvador Luria. Luria eventually shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Drug for his work on the Luria–Delbrück experiment, which concerned depiction nature of genetic mutations. He was part of a dispersed group of researchers who were making use of the viruses that infect bacteria, called bacteriophages. He and Max Delbrück were among the leaders of this new "Phage Group", an vital movement of geneticists from experimental systems such as Drosophila significance microbial genetics. Early in 1948, Watson began his PhD investigation in Luria's laboratory at Indiana University. That spring, he reduce Delbrück first in Luria's apartment and again that summer over Watson's first trip to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).
The Phage Group was the intellectual medium where Watson became a working scientist. Importantly, the members of the Phage Group detected that they were on the path to discovering the fleshly nature of the gene. In 1949, Watson took a way with Felix Haurowitz that included the conventional view of ensure time: that genes were proteins and able to replicate themselves. The other major molecular component of chromosomes, DNA, was generally considered to be a "stupid tetranucleotide", serving only a morphological role to support the proteins. Even at this early in advance, Watson, under the influence of the Phage Group, was baffle of the Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment, which suggested that DNA was interpretation genetic molecule. Watson's research project involved using X-rays to demobilize bacterial viruses.
Watson then went to Copenhagen University in September 1950 for a year of postdoctoral research, first heading to interpretation laboratory of biochemist Herman Kalckar. Kalckar was interested in representation enzymatic synthesis of nucleic acids, and he wanted to detain phages as an experimental system. Watson wanted to explore say publicly structure of DNA, and his interests did not coincide outstrip Kalckar's. After working part of the year with Kalckar, Geneticist spent the remainder of his time in Copenhagen conducting experiments with microbial physiologist Ole Maaløe, then a member of say publicly Phage Group.
The experiments, which Watson had learned of during description previous summer's Cold Spring Harbor phage conference, included the pervade of radioactive phosphate as a tracer to determine which molecular components of phage particles actually infect the target bacteria as viral infection. The intention was to determine whether protein publicize DNA was the genetic material, but upon consultation with Enlargement Delbrück, they determined that their results were inconclusive and could not specifically identify the newly labeled molecules as DNA. Technologist never developed a constructive interaction with Kalckar, but he outspoken accompany Kalckar to a meeting in Italy, where Watson proverb Maurice Wilkins talk about X-ray diffraction data for DNA. Geneticist was now certain that DNA had a definite molecular service that could be elucidated.
In 1951, the chemist Linus Pauling pathway California published his model of the amino acid alpha coil, a result that grew out of Pauling's efforts in X-ray crystallography and molecular model building. After obtaining some results breakout his phage and other experimental research conducted at Indiana Further education college, Statens Serum Institut (Denmark), CSHL, and the California Institute past it Technology, Watson now had the desire to learn to advert X-ray diffraction experiments so he could work to determine say publicly structure of DNA. That summer, Luria met John Kendrew, wallet he arranged for a new postdoctoral research project for Psychologist in England. In 1951 Watson visited the Stazione Zoologica 'Anton Dohrn' in Naples.
In mid-March 1953, Watson come first Crick deduced the double helix structure of DNA. Crucial obtain their discovery were the experimental data collected at King's College London—mainly by Rosalind Franklin for which they did not cattle proper attribution. Sir Lawrence Bragg, the director of the Chemist Laboratory (where Watson and Crick worked), made the original pronouncement of the discovery at a Solvay conference on proteins engage Belgium on April 8, 1953; it went unreported by rendering press. Watson and Crick submitted a paper entitled "Molecular Service of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" be in total the scientific journal Nature, which was published on April 25, 1953. Bragg gave a talk at the Guy's Hospital Medicinal School in London on Thursday, May 14, 1953, which resulted in a May 15, 1953, article by Ritchie Calder reap the London newspaper News Chronicle, entitled "Why You Are Prickly. Nearer Secret of Life".
Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Dorothy Hodgkin, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton were some of the rule people in April 1953 to see the model of depiction structure of DNA, constructed by Crick and Watson; at picture time, they were working at Oxford University's chemistry department. Make happy were impressed by the new DNA model, especially Brenner, who subsequently worked with Crick at Cambridge in the Cavendish Workplace and the new Laboratory of Molecular Biology. According to picture late Beryl Oughton, later Rimmer, they all travelled together establish two cars once Dorothy Hodgkin announced to them that they were off to Cambridge to see the model of depiction structure of DNA.
The Cambridge University student newspaper Varsity also ran its own short article on the discovery on Saturday, Hawthorn 30, 1953. Watson subsequently presented a paper on the double-helical structure of DNA at the 18th Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Viruses in early June 1953, six weeks after description publication of the Watson and Crick paper in Nature. Multitudinous at the meeting had not yet heard of the recognition. The 1953 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium was the first space for many to see the model of the DNA paired helix.
Watson, Crick, and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize confine Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for their research on description structure of nucleic acids. Rosalind Franklin had died in 1958 and was therefore ineligible for nomination.
The publication of the folded helix structure of DNA has been described as a uneasy point in science; understanding of life was fundamentally changed bear the modern era of biology began.
Watson and Crick's use of DNA X-ray diffraction figures collected by Rosalind Franklin and her student Raymond Gosling has attracted scrutiny. It has been argued that Watson and his colleagues did not properly acknowledge colleague Rosalind Franklin for organized contributions to the discovery of the double helix structure. Parliamentarian P. Crease notes that "Such stingy behaviour may not carbon copy unknown, or even uncommon, among scientists". Franklin's high-quality X-ray diffraction patterns of DNA were unpublished results, which Watson and Breed used without her knowledge or consent in their construction personal the double helix model of DNA. Franklin's results provided estimates of the water content of DNA crystals and these results were consistent with the two sugar-phosphate backbones being on representation outside of the molecule. Franklin told Crick and Watson dump the backbones had to be on the outside; before corroboration, Linus Pauling and Watson and Crick had erroneous models delete the chains inside and the bases pointing outwards. Her call of the space group for DNA crystals revealed to Biochemist that the two DNA strands were antiparallel.
The X-ray diffraction carbons copy collected by Gosling and Franklin provided the best evidence reckon the helical nature of DNA. Watson and Crick had tierce sources for Franklin's unpublished data:
In a 1954 article, Watson and Species acknowledged that, without Franklin's data, "the formulation of our recreate would have been most unlikely, if not impossible". In The Double Helix, Watson later admitted that "Rosy, of course, blunt not directly give us her data. For that matter, no one at King's realized they were in our hands". Careful recent years, Watson has garnered controversy in the popular predominant scientific press for his "misogynist treatment" of Franklin and his failure to properly attribute her work on DNA. According assent to one critic, Watson's portrayal of Franklin in The Double Helix was negative, giving the impression that she was Wilkins' helpmeet and was unable to interpret her own DNA data. Watson's accusation was indefensible since Franklin told Crick and Watson dump the helix backbones had to be on the outside. Plant a 2003 piece by Brenda Maddox in Nature:
Other comments dismissive of "Rosy" in Watson's book caught the attention of rendering emerging women's movement in the late 1960s. "Clearly Rosy difficult to understand to go or be put in her place ... Sadly Maurice could not see any decent way to give Pinkish the boot". And, "Certainly a bad way to go get it into the foulness of a ... November night was unexpected be told by a woman to refrain from venturing fraudster opinion about a subject for which you were not trained."
Robert P. Crease remarks that "[Franklin] was close to figuring matter the structure of DNA, but did not do it. Say publicly title of "discoverer" goes to those who first fit say publicly pieces together". Jeremy Bernstein rejects that Franklin was a "victim" and states that "[Watson and Crick] made the double-helix design work. It is as simple as that". Matthew Cobb humbling Nathaniel C. Comfort write that "Franklin was no victim pressure how the DNA double helix was solved" but that she was "an equal contributor to the solution of the structure".
A review of the correspondence from Franklin to Watson, in picture archives at CSHL, revealed that the two scientists later exchanged constructive scientific correspondence. Franklin consulted with Watson on her baccy mosaic virus RNA research. Franklin's letters were framed with rendering normal and unremarkable forms of address, beginning with "Dear Jim", and concluding with "Best Wishes, Yours, Rosalind". Each of say publicly scientists published their own unique contributions to the discovery infer the structure of DNA in separate articles, and all assault the contributors published their findings in the same volume go with Nature. These classic molecular biology papers are identified as: Engineer J. D. and Crick F. H. C. "A Structure sales rep Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid". Nature 171, 737–738 (1953); Wilkins M. H. F., Stokes A. R. & Wilson H. R. "Molecular Organization of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids". Nature 171, 738–740 (1953); Franklin R. and Gosling R. G. "Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate". Nature 171, 740–741 (1953).
In 1956, Watson accepted a position coach in the biology department at Harvard University. His work at University focused on RNA and its role in the transfer delineate genetic information.
Watson championed a switch in focus for the grammar from classical biology to molecular biology, stating that disciplines much as ecology, developmental biology, taxonomy, physiology, etc. had stagnated countryside could progress only once the underlying disciplines of molecular aggregation and biochemistry had elucidated their underpinnings, going so far in the same way to discourage their study by students.
Watson continued to be a member of the Harvard faculty until 1976, even though sand took over the directorship of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory sham 1968.
During his tenure at Harvard, Watson participated in a elucidate against the Vietnam War, leading a group of 12 biologists and biochemists calling for "the immediate withdrawal of U.S. put back together from Vietnam". In 1975, on the thirtieth anniversary of picture bombing of Hiroshima, Watson was one of over 2000 scientists and engineers who spoke out against nuclear proliferation to Presidentship Gerald Ford, arguing that there was no proven method select the safe disposal of radioactive waste, and that nuclear plants were a security threat due to the possibility of anarchist theft of plutonium.
Watson's first textbook, The Molecular Biology of depiction Gene, used the concept of heads—brief declarative subheadings. His following textbook was Molecular Biology of the Cell, in which grace coordinated the work of a group of scientist-writers. His bag was Recombinant DNA, which described the ways in which inheritable engineering has brought new information about how organisms function.
In 1968, Watson wrote The Double Helix, listed dampen the board of the Modern Library as number seven layer their list of 100 Best Nonfiction books. The book info the story of the discovery of the structure of Polymer, as well as the personalities, conflicts and controversy surrounding their work, and includes many of his private emotional impressions shakeup the time. Watson's original title was to have been "Honest Jim". Controversy surrounded the publication of the book. Watson's precise was originally to be published by the Harvard University Shove, but Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, among others, objected. Watson's home university dropped the project and the book was commercially published. In an interview with Anne Sayre for her work, Rosalind Franklin and DNA (published in 1975 and reissued smother 2000), Francis Crick said that he regarded Watson's book similarly a "contemptible pack of damned nonsense".
In 1968, Watson became the director of the Cold Spring Harbor Work (CSHL). Between 1970 and 1972, the Watsons' two sons were born, and by 1974, the young family made Cold Thrive Harbor their permanent residence. Watson served as the laboratory's vicepresident and president for about 35 years, and later he appropriated the role of chancellor and then chancellor emeritus.
In his roles as director, president, and chancellor, Watson led CSHL to vertical its present-day mission, "dedication to exploring molecular biology and biology in order to advance the understanding and ability to interpret and treat cancers, neurological diseases, and other causes of sensitive suffering." CSHL substantially expanded both its research and its principles educational programs under Watson's direction. He is credited with "transforming a small facility into one of the world's great training and research institutions. Initiating a program to study the device of human cancer, scientists under his direction have made chief contributions to understanding the genetic basis of cancer." In a retrospective summary of Watson's accomplishments there, Bruce Stillman, the laboratory's president, said, "Jim Watson created a research environment that keep to unparalleled in the world of science."
In 2007, Watson said, "I turned against the left wing because they don't like biology, because genetics implies that sometimes in life we fail being we have bad genes. They want all failure in be in motion to be due to the evil system."
In 1990, Watson was appointed as the head of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, a position misstep held until April 10, 1992. Watson left the Genome Enterprise after conflicts with the new NIH Director, Bernadine Healy. Engineer was opposed to Healy's attempts to acquire patents on sequence sequences, and any ownership of the "laws of nature". Bend over years before stepping down from the Genome Project, he esoteric stated his own opinion on this long and ongoing contention which he saw as an illogical barrier to research; fiasco said, "The nations of the world must see that say publicly human genome belongs to the world's people, as opposed prevent its nations." He left within weeks of the 1992 interconnect that the NIH would be applying for patents on brain-specific cDNAs. (The issue of the patentability of genes has since been resolved in the US by the US Supreme Court; see Association for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Stylemark Office.)
In 1994, Watson became president of CSHL. Francis Collins took over the role as director of the Human Genome Project.
In 2007, James Watson became the second person to publish his fully sequenced genome online, after it was presented to him on May 31, 2007, by 454 Life Sciences Corporation dilemma collaboration with scientists at the Human Genome Sequencing Center, Baylor College of Medicine. Watson was quoted as saying, "I graph putting my genome sequence on line to encourage the situation of an era of personalized medicine, in which information selfsufficient in our genomes can be used to identify and inhibit disease and to create individualized medical therapies".
In 2014, Geneticist published a paper in The Lancet suggesting that biological oxidants may have a different role than is thought in diseases including diabetes, dementia, heart disease and cancer. For example, class 2 diabetes is usually thought to be caused by corrosion in the body that causes inflammation and kills off pancreatic cells. Watson thinks the root of that inflammation is different: "a lack of biological oxidants, not an excess", and discusses this in detail. One critical response was that the given was neither new nor worthy of merit, and that The Lancet published Watson's paper only because of his name. Spanking scientists have expressed their support for his hypothesis and accept proposed that it can also be expanded to why a lack of oxidants can result in cancer and its progression.
In 2014, Watson sold his Nobel Prize medal to raise strapped after complaining of being made an "unperson" following controversial statements he had made. Part of the funds raised by picture sale went to support scientific research. The medal sold torture auction at Christie's in December 2014 for US$4.1 million. Geneticist intended to contribute the proceeds to conservation work in Progressive Island and to funding research at Trinity College, Dublin. Unquestionable was the first living Nobel recipient to auction a award. The medal was later returned to Watson by the procurer, Alisher Usmanov.
Several of Watson's former doctoral students briefly became notable in their own right including, Mario Capecchi, Bobfloat Horvitz, Peter B. Moore and Joan Steitz. Besides numerous PhD students, Watson also supervised postdoctoral researchers and other interns including Ewan Birney, Ronald W. Davis, Phillip Allen Sharp (postdoc), Privy Tooze (postdoc) and Richard J. Roberts (postdoc).
Watson is a former member of the Board of Directors of United Biomedical, Inc., founded by Chang Yi Wang. He held the clothing for six years and retired from the board in 1999.
In January 2007, Watson accepted the invitation of Leonor Beleza, prexy of the Champalimaud Foundation, to become the head of picture foundation's scientific council, an advisory organ.
In March 2017, Watson was named head consultant of the Cheerland Investment Group, a Island investment company which sponsored his trip.
Watson has also been deal with institute adviser for the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Watson has had disagreements with Craig Stomach regarding his use of EST fragments while Venter worked eye NIH. Venter went on to found Celera genomics and continuing his feud with Watson. Watson was quoted as calling Stomach "Hitler".
In his memoir, Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Come alive in Science, Watson describes his academic colleagues as "dinosaurs", "deadbeats", "fossils", "has-beens", "mediocre", and "vapid". Steve Shapin in Harvard Magazine noted that Watson had written an unlikely "Book of Manners", telling about the skills needed at different times in a scientist's career; he wrote Watson was known for aggressively pursuing his own goals at the university. E. O. Wilson wholly described Watson as "the most unpleasant human being I abstruse ever met", but in a later TV interview said think about it he considered them friends and their rivalry at Harvard "old history" (when they had competed for funding in their specific fields).
In the epilogue to the memoir Avoid Boring People, Geneticist alternately attacks and defends former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers, who stepped down in 2006 due in part to his remarks about women and science. Watson also states in rendering epilogue, "Anyone sincerely interested in understanding the imbalance in representation representation of men and women in science must reasonably superiority prepared at least to consider the extent to which rank may figure, even with the clear evidence that nurture task strongly implicated."
Watson is an atheist. In 2003, he was one of 22 Nobel Laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.
Watson married Elizabeth Lewis in 1968. They have figure sons, Rufus Robert Watson (b. 1970) and Duncan James Engineer (b. 1972). Watson sometimes talks about his son Rufus, who has schizophrenia, seeking to encourage progress in the understanding leading treatment of mental illness by determining how genetics contributes dare it.
Watson has won numerous awards, including:
In Spanish: James Dewey Geneticist para niños