James Watson, co-discoverer of the double-helix shape of DNA, has died at age 97

James D Watson whose co-discovery of the twisted-ladder structure of DNA in helped light the long fuse on a revolution in medicine crimefighting genealogy and ethics has died He was The breakthrough made when the brash Chicago-born Watson was just turned him into a hallowed figure in the world of science for decades But near the end of his life he faced condemnation and professional censure for offensive remarks including saying Black people are less intelligent than white people Watson shared a Nobel Prize with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for discovering that deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA is a double helix consisting of two strands that coil around each other to create what resembles a long gently twisting ladder That realization was a breakthrough It instantly suggested how hereditary information is stored and how cells duplicate their DNA when they divide The duplication begins with the two strands of DNA pulling apart like a zipper Even among non-scientists the double helix would become an instantly recognized symbol of science showing up in such places as the work of Salvador Dali and a British postage stamp The discovery helped open the door to more latest developments such as tinkering with the genetic makeup of living things treating ailment by inserting genes into patients identifying human remains and criminal individuals from DNA samples and tracing family trees and ancient human ancestors But it has also raised a host of ethical questions such as whether we should be altering the body s blueprint for cosmetic reasons or in a way that is transmitted to a person s offspring Francis Crick and I made the discovery of the century that was pretty clear Watson once stated He later wrote There was no way we could have foreseen the explosive impact of the double helix on science and society Watson never made another lab finding that big But in the decades that followed he wrote influential textbooks and a best-selling memoir and helped guide the project to map the human genome He picked out bright young scientists and helped them And he used his prestige and contacts to influence science procedures Watson died in hospice care after a brief illness his son declared Friday His former research lab substantiated he passed away a day earlier He never stopped fighting for people who were suffering from sickness Duncan Watson stated of his father Watson s initial motivation for supporting the gene project was personal His son Rufus had been hospitalized with a achievable evaluation of schizophrenia and Watson figured that knowing the complete makeup of DNA would be crucial for understanding that infection maybe in time to help his son He gained unwelcome attention in when the Sunday Times Magazine of London quoted him as saying he was inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa because all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours where all the testing says not really He reported that while he hopes everyone is equal people who have to deal with Black employees find this is not true He apologized but after an international furor he was suspended from his job as chancellor of the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York He retired a week later He had served in various leadership jobs there for nearly years In a television documentary that aired in early Watson was requested if his views had changed No not at all he disclosed In response the Cold Spring Harbor lab revoked several honorary titles it had given Watson saying his statements were reprehensible and unsupported by science Watson s combination of scientific achievement and controversial remarks created a complicated legacy He has shown a regrettable tendency toward inflammatory and offensive remarks especially late in his career Dr Francis Collins then-director of the National Institutes of Soundness disclosed in His outbursts particularly when they reflected on race were both profoundly misguided and deeply hurtful I only wish that Jim s views on society and humanity could have matched his brilliant scientific insights Long before that Watson scorned political correctness A goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull but also just stupid he wrote in The Double Helix his bestselling book about the DNA discovery For success in science he wrote You have to avoid dumb people Never do anything that bores you If you can t stand to be with your real peers including scientific competitors get out of science To make a huge success a scientist has to be prepared to get into deep trouble It was in the fall of that the tall skinny Watson already the holder of a Ph D at arrived at Britain s Cambridge University where he met Crick As a Watson biographer later reported It was intellectual love at first sight Crick himself wrote that the partnership thrived in part because the two men shared a certain youthful arrogance a ruthlessness and an impatience with sloppy thinking Together they sought to tackle the structure of DNA aided by X-ray research by colleague Rosalind Franklin and her graduate trainee Raymond Gosling Watson was later criticized for a disparaging portrayal of Franklin in The Double Helix and the present day she is considered a prominent example of a female scientist whose contributions were overlooked She died in Watson and Crick built Tinker Toy-like models to work out the molecule s structure One Saturday morning in after fiddling with bits of cardboard he had meticulously cut to represent fragments of the DNA molecule Watson suddenly realized how these pieces could form the rungs of a double helix ladder His first reaction It s so beautiful Figuring out the double helix goes down as one of the three the majority critical discoveries in the history of biology alongside Charles Darwin s theory of evolution through natural selection and Gregor Mendel s fundamental laws of genetics noted Cold Spring Harbor lab s president Bruce Stillman Following the discovery Watson spent two years at the California Institute of System then joined the faculty at Harvard in Before leaving Harvard in he essentially created the university s effort for molecular biology scientist Mark Ptashne recalled in a interview Watson became director of the Cold Spring Harbor lab in its president in and its chancellor years later He made the lab on Long Island an educational center for scientists and non-scientists focused research on cancer instilled a sense of excitement and raised huge amounts of money He transformed the lab into a vibrant incredibly key center Ptashne announced It was one of the miracles of Jim a more disheveled less smooth less typically ingratiating person you could hardly imagine From to Watson directed the federal effort to identify the detailed makeup of human DNA He created the project s huge financing in ethics research by exclusively announcing it at a news conference He later noted it was seemingly the wisest thing I ve done over the past decade Watson was on hand at the White House in for the announcement that the federal project had completed an major goal a working draft of the human genome basically a road map to an estimated percent of human genes Researchers presented Watson with the detailed description of his own genome in It was one of the first genomes of an individual to be deciphered Watson knew that genetic research could produce findings that make specific people uncomfortable In he wrote that when scientists identify genetic variants that predispose people to crime or significantly affect intelligence the findings should be publicized rather than squelched out of political correctness James Dewey Watson was born in Chicago on April into a family that thought in books birds and the Democratic Party as he put it From his birdwatcher father he inherited an interest in ornithology and a distaste for explanations that didn t rely on reason or science Watson was a precocious child who loved to read studying books like The World Telegraph Almanac of Facts He entered the University of Chicago on a scholarship at graduated at and earned his doctorate in zoology at Indiana University three years later He got interested in genetics at age when he read a book that commented genes were the essence of life I thought Well if the gene is the essence of life I want to know more about it he later recalled And that was fateful because otherwise I would have spent my life studying birds and no one would have heard of me At the time it wasn t clear that genes were made of DNA at least for any life form other than bacteria But Watson went to Europe to investigation the biochemistry of nucleic acids like DNA At a conference in Italy Watson saw an X-ray image that indicated DNA could form crystals Suddenly I was excited about chemistry Watson wrote in The Double Helix If genes could crystallize they must have a regular structure that could be solved in a straightforward fashion A possible key to the secret of life was impossible to push out of my mind he recalled In the decades after his discovery Watson s fame persisted Apple Computer used his picture in an ad campaign At conferences graduate students who weren t even born when he worked at Cambridge nudged each other and whispered There s Watson There s Watson They got him to autograph napkins or copies of The Double Helix A reporter sought him if any building at the Cold Spring Harbor lab was named after him No Watson replied I don t need a building named after me I have the double helix His remarks on race were not the first time Watson struck a nerve with his comments In a speech in he suggested that sex drive is related to skin color And earlier he described a newspaper that if a gene governing sexuality were unveiled and could be detected in the womb a woman who didn t want to have a gay child should be allowed to have an abortion More than a half-century after winning the Nobel Watson put the gold medal up for auction in The winning bid million set a record for a Nobel The medal was eventually returned to Watson Both of Watson s Nobel co-winners Crick and Wilkins died in Ritter is a retired AP science writer AP science writers Christina Larson in Washington and Adithi Ramakrishnan in New York contributed to this description The Associated Press Fitness and Science Department receives aid from the Howard Hughes Diagnostic Institute s Department of Science Instruction and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation The AP is solely responsible for all content Source