James Watson, Co-Discoverer of DNA’s Structure, Dead at Age 97

James Watson, Who Helped Discover the Structure of DNA, Is Dead at Age 97

By David M. Ewalt

James Dewey Watson, a molecular biologist whose work helped decode the construction of DNA, died on November 6, 2025, at a hospice in East Northport, N.Y. He was 97 years outdated.

Watson was greatest recognized for his contributions to the 1953 discovery of the double-helix construction of DNA, revealed when he and molecular biologist Francis Crick published their research in Nature. The discovery confirmed how genetic info is saved and replicated and launched a brand new period of molecular genetics and biotechnology.

Watson was born in Chicago on April 6, 1928. He entered the University of Chicago at age 15, earned a level in zoology after which accomplished his Ph.D. at Indiana University in 1950. In 1951 he joined the Cavendish Laboratory on the University of Cambridge in England, met Crick and commenced to collaborate on analysis into the character of DNA.

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Their large breakthrough relied closely on x-ray diffraction information produced by chemist Rosalind Franklin and biophysicist Maurice Wilkins at King’s College London. Watson shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Wilkins and Crick, and Franklin solely obtained correct credit score for her contribution a lot later.

Watson later joined Harvard University’s biology school, the place his analysis targeted on understanding messenger RNA. In 1968 he was named director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which he helped flip into a number one heart for genetics analysis.

Watson was writer of a number of books, together with The Double Helix and Molecular Biology of the Gene.

His legacy was sophisticated by repeated racist remarks that linked race and intelligence. Those statements led to his resignation from Cold Spring Harbor in 2007.

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