James Watson
James Dewey Watson was an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he and Francis Crick co-authored an academic paper in Nature proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule, building on research by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling. In 1962, Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".
Watson graduated from the University of Chicago in 1947 and received his doctorate from Indiana University Bloomington in 1950. After a post-doctoral year at the University of Copenhagen with Herman Kalckar and Ole Maaløe, Watson worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in England, where he met his future collaborator Francis Crick. From 1956 to 1976, Watson was employed by the faculty of the Harvard University Biology Department, promoting research in molecular biology.
From 1968, Watson served as the director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Laurel Hollow, New York, greatly expanding its level of funding and research. At CSHL, he shifted his research emphasis to the study of cancer, along with making it a world-leading research center in molecular biology. In 1994, Watson started as president and served for 10 years. He was then appointed chancellor, serving until his resignation in 2007 after making comments claiming that there is a genetic link between race and intelligence. In 2019, after the broadcast of a documentary where Watson reiterated these views on race and genetics, CSHL revoked his honorary titles and severed all ties with him.
Watson wrote many science books, including the textbook Molecular Biology of the Gene and his bestselling book The Double Helix. He made derogatory comments about Rosalind Franklin, who had been responsible for gathering data that led to the discovery of the structure of DNA, and was criticized for misogyny. Between 1988 and 1992, Watson was associated with the National Institutes of Health, helping to establish the Human Genome Project, which completed the task of mapping the human genome in 2003.
Early life and education
James Dewey Watson was born in Chicago on April 6, 1928, the only son of Jean and James D. Watson, a businessman descended mostly from colonial English immigrants to America. His maternal grandfather, Lauchlin Mitchell, a tailor, was from Glasgow, Scotland, and his maternal grandmother, Lizzie Gleason, was the child of parents from County Tipperary, Ireland. Watson's mother was a modestly religious Catholic and his father an Episcopalian who had lost his belief in God. Watson grew up Catholic, but he later described himself as "an escapee from the Catholic religion". Watson said, "The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn't believe in God." By age 11, Watson stopped attending mass and embraced the "pursuit of scientific and humanistic knowledge."Watson grew up on the South Side of Chicago and attended public schools, including Horace Mann Elementary School and South Shore High School. He was fascinated with bird watching, a hobby shared with his father, so Watson considered majoring in ornithology. He appeared on Quiz Kids, a popular radio show that challenged bright youngsters to answer questions. Thanks to the liberal policy of university president Robert Hutchins, Watson enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he was awarded a tuition scholarship at age 15. Among his professors was Louis Leon Thurstone, from whom Watson learned about factor analysis, which he later referenced on his [|controversial views on race].
After reading Erwin Schrödinger's book What Is Life? in 1946, Watson changed his professional ambitions from the study of ornithology to genetics. Watson earned his Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from the University of Chicago the following year. In his autobiography, Avoid Boring People, Watson described the University of Chicago as an "idyllic academic institution where was instilled with the capacity for critical 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 of Chicago to become a graduate student at Indiana University, attracted by the presence at Bloomington of the 1946 Nobel Prize winner Hermann Joseph Muller, who in crucial papers published in 1922, 1929, and in the 1930s had laid out all the basic properties of the heredity molecule that Schrödinger presented in his 1944 book. Watson received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Indiana University Bloomington in 1950; Salvador Luria was his doctoral advisor.
Career and research
Luria, Delbrück, and the Phage Group
Originally, Watson was drawn into molecular biology by the work of Salvador Luria. Luria eventually shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the Luria–Delbrück experiment, which concerned the nature of genetic mutations. He was part of a distributed 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 important movement of geneticists from experimental systems such as Drosophila towards microbial genetics. Early in 1948, Watson began his PhD research in Luria's laboratory at Indiana University. That spring, he met Delbrück first in Luria's apartment and again that summer during Watson's first trip to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.The Phage Group was the intellectual medium where Watson became a working scientist. Importantly, the members of the Phage Group sensed that they were on the path to discovering the physical nature of the gene. In 1949, Watson took a course with Felix Haurowitz that included the conventional view of that time: that genes were proteins and able to replicate themselves. The other major molecular component of chromosomes, DNA, was widely considered to be a "stupid tetranucleotide", serving only a structural role to support the proteins. Even at this early time, Watson, under the influence of the Phage Group, was aware of the Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment, which suggested that DNA was the genetic molecule. Watson's research project involved using X-rays to inactivate bacterial viruses.
Watson then went to Copenhagen University in September 1950 for a year of postdoctoral research, first heading to the laboratory of biochemist Herman Kalckar. Kalckar was interested in the enzymatic synthesis of nucleic acids, and he wanted to use phages as an experimental system. Watson wanted to explore the structure of DNA, and his interests did not coincide with Kalckar's. After working part of the year with Kalckar, Watson spent the remainder of his time in Copenhagen conducting experiments with microbial physiologist Ole Maaløe, then a member of the Phage Group.
The experiments, of which Watson became aware at the previous summer's Cold Spring Harbor phage conference, employed radioactive phosphate as a tracer to identify which molecular components of bacteriophage particles are responsible for infecting the host bacteria during viral entry. The intention was to determine whether protein or DNA was the genetic material, but upon consultation with Max Delbrück, they determined that their results were inconclusive and could not specifically identify the newly labeled molecules as DNA. Watson never developed a constructive interaction with Kalckar, but he did accompany Kalckar to a meeting in Italy, where Watson saw Maurice Wilkins talk about X-ray diffraction data for DNA. Watson had become firmly convinced that DNA possessed a distinct molecular structure amenable to precise elucidation.
In 1951, the chemists Linus Pauling, Robert Corey and Herman Branson in California published their model of the amino acid alpha helix, a result that grew out of their efforts in X-ray crystallography and molecular model building. After obtaining some results from his phage and other experimental research conducted at Indiana University, Statens Serum Institut, CSHL, and the California Institute of Technology, Watson now had the desire to learn to perform X-ray diffraction experiments so he could work to determine the structure of DNA. That summer, Luria met John Kendrew, and he arranged for a new postdoctoral research project for Watson in England. In 1951, Watson visited the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn in Naples.
Identifying the double helix
In mid-March 1953, Watson and Crick deduced the double helix structure of DNA. Crucial to their discovery were the experimental data collected at King's College London—mainly by Rosalind Franklin, and for which they did not provide proper attribution. Sir Lawrence Bragg, the director of the Cavendish Laboratory, made the original announcement of the discovery at a Solvay conference on proteins in Belgium on April 8, 1953; it went unreported by the press. Watson and Crick submitted a paper entitled "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" to the scientific journal Nature, which was published on April 25, 1953.Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Dorothy Hodgkin, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton were some of the first people in April 1953 to see the model of the structure of DNA, constructed by Crick and Watson; at the time, they were working at Oxford University's chemistry department. All were impressed by the new DNA model, especially Brenner, who subsequently worked with Crick at Cambridge in the Cavendish Laboratory and the new Laboratory of Molecular Biology. According to the late Beryl Oughton, later Rimmer, they all travelled together in two cars once Hodgkin announced to them that they were off to Cambridge to see the model of the structure of DNA.
The Cambridge University student newspaper Varsity ran its own short article on the discovery on May 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 the publication of the Watson and Crick paper in Nature. Many at the meeting had not yet heard of the discovery. The 1953 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium was the first opportunity for many to see the model of the DNA double helix. Watson, Crick, and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for their research on the structure of nucleic acids. Rosalind Franklin had died in 1958 and was therefore ineligible for nomination. The publication of the double helix structure of DNA has been described as a turning point in science; understanding of life was fundamentally changed and the modern era of biology began.