James Dewey Watson, who helped reveal DNA’s double-helix structure, kicked off the Human Genome Project, and became infamous for his racist, sexist, and otherwise offensive statements, has died. He was 97.
His death was confirmed to The New York Times by his son Duncan, who said Watson died on Thursday in a hospice in East Northport, New York, on Long Island. He had previously been hospitalized with an infection. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory also confirmed his passing.
Watson was born in Chicago in 1928 and attained scientific fame in 1953 at 25 years old for solving the molecular structure of DNA—the genetic blueprints for life—with his colleague Francis Crick at England’s Cavendish laboratory. Their discovery heavily relied on the work of chemist and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin at King’s College in London, whose X-ray images of DNA provided critical clues to the molecule’s twisted-ladderlike architecture. One image in particular from Franklin’s lab, Photo 51, made Watson and Crick’s discovery possible. But, she was not fully credited for her contribution. The image was given to Watson and Crick without Franklin’s knowledge or consent by Maurice Wilkins, a biophysicist and colleague of Franklin.
Watson, Crick, and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for the discovery of DNA’s structure. By that time, Franklin had died (she died in 1958 at the age of 37 from ovarian cancer), and Nobels are not given posthumously. But Watson and Crick’s treatment of Franklin and her research has generated lasting scorn within the scientific community. Throughout his career and in his memoir, Watson disparaged Franklin’s intelligence and appearance.