James D. Watson, one of the discoverers of the DNA helix and father of the Human Genome Project, stands in a lab at the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. | Photo: Reuters
James Watson — the Nobel Prize winner credited with the key discovery of the DNA double helix structure but whose career was later tarnished by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday (Nov. 7, 2025). He was 97.
The distinguished biologist died Thursday at Hospice of Long Island in New York, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he had spent most of his career, announced.
Watson became one of the most celebrated scientists of the 20th century for his breakthrough discovery of the double helix in 1953 with research partner Francis Crick.
Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for their work, important research that led to the development of modern biology and opened the way to new understandings, including the genetic code and protein synthesis.
It marked a new era of modern life that allowed for revolutionary technologies in medicine, forensics and genetics – from DNA analysis of criminals to genetically engineered plants.
Watson went on to do groundbreaking work in cancer research and mapping the human genome.
But he later came under fire and withdrew from the public eye for controversial statements, including that Africans were not as intelligent as white people.
Watson told the British weekly about it The Sunday Times he was “inherently bleak about Africa’s prospects” because “our whole social policy is based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours—when all the tests say they are not.”
A spiral staircase
James Dewey Watson, born April 6, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois, received a scholarship from the University of Chicago.
He earned a degree in zoology in 1947 before attending Indiana University in Bloomington, where he received his Ph.D. in zoology in 1950.
He became interested in the work of scientists working at the University of Cambridge in England with photographic samples made using X-rays.
After moving to the University of Copenhagen, Watson began researching the structure of DNA.
In 1951, he went to a zoological station in Naples, where he met researcher Maurice Wilkins and saw the X-ray diffraction pattern of crystalline DNA for the first time.
He soon met Francis Crick and began what became a famous partnership.
Working with X-ray images obtained by Rosalind Franklin and Wilkins, researchers at King’s College London, Watson and Crick began their historic work of elucidating the double helix.
Their first serious attempt failed.
But their second attempt led to the pair introducing a double spiral configuration, the now iconic image that resembles a winding staircase.
Their model also showed how a DNA molecule can duplicate itself, thus answering a fundamental question in the field of genetics.
Watson and Crick published their findings in the British journal Nature in April-May 1953 to great acclaim.
Watson taught at Harvard for 15 years before becoming director of what is now known as the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which he turned into a global center for molecular biology research.
From 1988 to 1992, Watson was co-director of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, where he directed the mapping of genes in human chromosomes.
But his comments about race and obesity – he was also known for sexist remarks – led to his departure in 2007.
In 2020, the lab severed all ties with him, including his honorary status, after he made similar claims again.
Published – 08 Nov 2025 02:38 IST
