Overview
- Watson died in hospice on Long Island after being transferred from a hospital where he was treated for an infection, his son told the New York Times.
- He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for describing DNA’s double-helix structure, drawing on X‑ray data from Rosalind Franklin and colleagues.
- As director from 1968, he helped build Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory into a leading research center, and he later helped launch the Human Genome Project before resigning over disputes about gene‑patenting policy.
- After widely condemned remarks about race in 2007, he left administrative roles at CSHL, and in 2019 the lab stripped him of honorary titles following similar statements.
- In later years he auctioned his Nobel medal, which buyer Alisher Usmanov returned, and he became one of the first individuals to have his full genome sequenced and publicly released.