James D. Watson

James Watson was born and raised in Chicago, where he developed an early passion for birdwatching and ornithology. He began studying at the University of Chicago at just 15 years old and graduated with a degree in Zoology in 1947. He then took an interest in the growing field of genetics, and he went to pursue a PhD at Indiana University. He finished in 1950, then moved to Europe to begin his career as a researcher. The Double Helix covers the next three years: Watson began by researching bacteriophages in Copenhagen, then moved to the University of Cambridge, where he and Francis Crick famously used Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray data to discover the double helix structure of DNA. This discovery revolutionized molecular biology and is the foundation for all modern work in genetics. In 1956, Watson moved to Harvard University’s Department of Biology, and in 1962, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins. Then, in 1968, he joined the prominent Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (or CSHL) as its research director. He stayed at the CSHL for three decades, helping it greatly expand and become a world leader in medical and genetic research. He briefly led the Human Genome Project from 1990-1992, but left after refusing to condone the National Institutes of Health’s plan to patent human genomes. He then returned to the CSHL. Ever since the mid-1990s, Watson has largely gained public attention for pushing the widely-disproven idea that Black people are less intelligent than white people because of genetic differences. He has also blamed genetic inferiority for women’s underrepresentation in science and argued that research is more effective without them. The scientific community has widely condemned his views. The CSHL fired him from his leadership position because of his racist comments in 2007, and then publicly denounced and cut all ties with him after he repeated these comments in 2019. In response to the public outcry over his beliefs, Watson complained of being treated as an “unperson” and denied opportunities. He also insisted that he is “not a racist in a conventional way.” He even became the first Nobel laureate to auction off his Nobel Prize in 2014.