Overview
- His son said he died in hospice on Long Island after a transfer from a hospital where he was treated for an infection.
- He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for describing DNA’s double-helix structure.
- He led Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for decades before losing roles and later honorary status after comments on race, reiterated in a 2019 documentary.
- He helped launch the Human Genome Project in 1988 as its first director and resigned four years later over disputes about patenting gene sequences.
- His use of Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray data remains central to long-running credit debates, and he later auctioned his Nobel medal in 2014 before the buyer returned it.