Overview
- Watson shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for describing DNA’s double-helix structure in 1953.
- The New York Times, citing his son Duncan, reported he died on November 6 in East Northport, Long Island, after being moved to hospice for palliative care related to an infection.
- He led Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for decades and directed the NIH’s National Center for Human Genome Research, helping launch the U.S. effort that became the Human Genome Project.
- His later years were marred by widely condemned racist remarks, leading to suspension, loss of titles in 2007, and the revocation of remaining honors by Cold Spring Harbor in 2019.
- The discovery drew on X-ray data from Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins; Watson’s memoir The Double Helix stirred criticism, and in 2014 he auctioned his Nobel medal, which buyer Alisher Usmanov later returned.