James Watson, Nobel laureate, American biologist and co-discoverer of the double helix shape of DNA, died on Thursday at the age of 97. Watson breathed his last in hospice care in East Northport, Long Island, New York.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for most of his career, confirmed the news.
Watson was transferred to hospice this week from a hospital where he was being treated for an infection, the New York Times reported, citing his son Duncan.
Nobel Prize
Watson shared the Nobel Prize in 1962 with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for the discovery that deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is a double helix, consisting of two strands that wind around each other to form what resembles a long, gently spinning ladder, the AP reported.
The career and controversies of James Watson
According to the New York Times, Watson lived on the grounds of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1968, he took over as director and transformed it into one of the world’s major microbiology centers. In 1993, he resigned from his position and took over the largely honorary position of chancellor.
Watson was ostracized by the scientific establishment after his reputation was tarnished by comments about genetics and race.
A NYT report said his official career there ended in disgrace in 2007 after he caused an uproar by suggesting in an interview with The Sunday Times in London that blacks were not as intelligent as whites.
How James Watson’s discovery helped
Watson’s discovery played a key role in medicine, crime fighting, genealogy and ethics,
The discovery helped identify human remains and criminal suspects from DNA samples and tracing family trees.
Watson had never found another lab this large. But in the decades that followed, he wrote influential textbooks and best-selling monographs and helped lead a project to map the human genome, the AP report said.
The Nobel laureate also selected bright young scientists and helped them. And he used his prestige and contacts to influence science policy.
Medal sold at auction
A Bloomberg report said that in 2014, Watson said he would sell his Nobel medal because his controversial remarks made him an outcast in the scientific community.
Watson also said that he needs the money and will donate some of the proceeds to scientific research. The medal sold at auction for $4.8 million.
“Because I was a ‘non-person’, I was thrown off the boards of companies, so I have no income, apart from my academic income,” Bloomberg said, citing the Financial Times.
