Overview
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory confirmed Watson’s death on Long Island at the age of 97.
- Watson died after a short illness in a hospice, according to his son.
- With Francis Crick, he described the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953 and later shared the 1962 Nobel Prize with Crick and Maurice Wilkins.
- He spent decades at Cold Spring Harbor; racist comments in 2007 led to his resignation, and the lab rescinded remaining honors in 2019 after he reaffirmed those views.
- The Watson–Crick model underpins modern molecular biology and genetic engineering and remains a staple of science education worldwide.