WATSON, James Dewey

(b. 6 April 1928 in Chicago, Illinois), molecular biologist, educator, codiscoverer of the double helical structure of DNA, author of The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1968), and corecipient of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine (1962).

Watson's father, James Dewey, was a businessman, and his mother, Jean (Mitchell), a secretary at the University of Chicago. He has one sister. At the age of twelve Watson appeared on the radio program Quiz Kids and at fifteen was admitted to a special program at the University of Chicago. While an undergraduate he developed an interest in the gene. He graduated in 1947 with a B.S. degree in zoology.

He received a fellowship to study zoology at Indiana University, Bloomington. Here his advisor and mentor was Salvador Luria, a biologist who was a founding member of the important Phage Group, an informal organization of scientists who were interested in viral reproduction. Watson eventually became a member of this group. In 1950 he received his Ph.D. in zoology for work on X-ray inactivation of bacteriophages.

Watson spent the 1950–1951 academic year doing postdoctoral work in Copenhagen, Denmark. In the spring of 1951, at a scientific meeting in Naples, Italy, he attended a lecture by Maurice Wilkins, a physicist turned molecular biologist. Wilkins displayed an X-ray diffraction image of crystalline deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). Watson was deeply impressed by the fact that DNA was not amorphous and decided that it might be the crucial part of the gene, one that he wanted to study.

Watson spent the next two years at the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, England. Here he met Francis Crick, another physicist turned microbiologist. Watson and Crick immediately became close friends and collaborators, spending many hours discussing scientific ideas. Both were obsessed with the importance of the structure of DNA.

Watson and Crick were aware of the recent work of Linus Pauling, perhaps the greatest chemist of the twentieth century, showing that some proteins have helical structure. They obtained information from Wilkins concerning his and Rosalind Franklin's work on X-ray diffraction of DNA done at King's College, London. They consulted with mathematicians and chemists at Cambridge. After several false starts they were able to construct a model of DNA as a double helix, which satisfied all the known chemical and physical properties of the molecule and elegantly implied the manner in which reproduction and mutations can occur. They described their model in the 25 April 1953 issue of Nature.

Watson was a senior research fellow at the California Institute of Technology from 1953 to 1955. He was appointed an assistant professor at Harvard in 1955 but immediately took a leave of absence to spend the 1955–1956 academic year back at the Cavendish Laboratory working with Crick. He started his career at Harvard in 1956 and was promoted to associate professor in 1958 and to professor in 1961. During this period he worked on the role of ribonucleic acid (RNA) in protein synthesis.

In 1962 Watson, together with Crick and Wilkins, was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work on the structure of DNA. In 1965 Watson published The Molecular Biology of the Gene, a much admired undergraduate text that earned him about as much as his Harvard salary.

The manuscript of The Double Helix, begun in 1962, was finished in 1966. Harvard refused to publish it because several scientists described in it had raised objections. After a few changes were made the book was published by Athenaeum Press (1968) and became a best-seller. It has been described as a scientific memoir, the first of its kind, illustrating how scientists work and how they are subject to the same foibles and competition as nonscientists. It has also been criticized as misleading and not typical of the way science is done, and for describing unverified and incorrect motives and thoughts of participants. However, in the Preface, Watson stated that he wanted to recreate his impressions of the events and personalities involved in the story. He succeeded in writing a memoir that can be read as if it were a lively and suspenseful novel.

The central issue that Watson described was the race to be the first (with Crick) to come up with the structure of DNA. At the time, the best work on X-ray diffraction had been done at King's College by Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. Unfortunately Franklin, new to King's College, and Wilkins became bitter enemies over whether Franklin was hired to assist Wilkins or to work independently. Watson described Franklin in a very negative manner but appreciated her skill as a scientist. Wilkins shared his own results and, without her knowledge, some of Franklin's results with Watson and Crick. In particular, Wilkins informed them of Franklin's discovery that DNA changed form depending on how much water was present—a fact that was crucial in determining the structure of DNA.

Word reached Watson and Crick that Pauling had constructed a model of the DNA molecule. Pauling's son, Paul, was at the Cavendish Laboratory and received a preliminary report on his father's work. Paul Pauling showed it to Watson, who found a fundamental chemical flaw in the proposed model. Instead of informing Linus Pauling of his error, Watson and Crick decided that they were close to a solution and had six weeks to complete a model before Pauling's work was published and the error spotted.

Succeed they did! In an exciting climax to the book, Watson describes how they finally came up with their model and notes that even Franklin thought it was correct.

The problem with the scenario as described by Watson is that although he thought of the endeavor as a race for priority, Pauling did not, nor did Wilkins or Franklin. Two of Franklin's student-collaborators describe her temperament quite differently from Watson. Unfortunately she died in 1958 and thus was not eligible to be considered for a Nobel Prize. In the Epilogue to The Double Helix, Watson pays homage to Franklin's superb accomplishments as a scientist in a male-dominated environment not very welcoming to women.

On 28 March 1968 Watson married Elizabeth Lewis. They have two sons. Also in 1968 Watson became part-time director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York. In 1978 he resigned from Harvard to work full-time at Cold Spring Harbor. In 1988 he was appointed associate director and later director of the Human Genome Project of the National Institutes of Health; he resigned from that position in 1992. In 1994 he became President of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a position created for him to relieve him of administrative duties.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Watson has received many honors and awards, including the Albert Lasker Award of the American Public Health Association (1960), the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977), the Copley Medal of the British Royal Society (1993), and the National Medal of Science (1997).

Watson has published two scientific memoirs, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1968) and Genes, Girls, and Gamow: After the Double Helix (2002). The Norton Critical Edition of The Double Helix (1980) includes the original text, commentaries, contemporary reviews, and original papers. Additional biographical material may be found in Robert C. Olby, The Path to the Double Helix (1974), a scholarly work; Anne Sayre, Rosalind Franklin and DNA (1975); Horace Freeland Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology (1979), from the perspective of a historian of science; John Gribbin, In Search of the Double Helix: Darwin, DNA, and Beyond (1985), written for the general reader; and Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (1988).

Howard Allen