NOBEL Prize-winning American scientist James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA’s twisted-ladder structure, has died aged 97.
The renowned scientist’s former research lab, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he worked and researched for decades, confirmed his tragic passing.
Watson helped discover the twisted structure of DNA in 1953 – leading to breakthroughs in medicine, crime fighting, genealogy and ethics.
Chicago-born Watson was just 24 when he and colleagues Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins made the groundbreaking discovery.
The trio’s revelation would pave the way for rapid advances in molecular biology.
Watson’s honorary titles were later stripped from him in 2019 after he repeated comments about race and intelligence.
ACTOR DEAD
Russia’s Inspector Morse killed on Ukraine frontline after TV cop asked to fight
Appearing on a TV programme, Watson made a reference to a view that genes cause a difference on average between races on IQ tests.
Watson earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1947 at the University of Chicago and at Indiana University Bloomington he claimed his PhD in 1950.
He later worked at the University of Cambridge‘s Cavendish Laboratory in England, where he first met his future collaborator Francis Crick.
The Cambridge University student newspaper – Vomiting – ran its own short article on the discovery.
Watson, Crick, and Wilkins worked together on the discovery while at Cambridge and were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for their research on the structure of nucleic acids
From 1956 to 1976, Watson was on the faculty of the Harvard University Biology Department, promoting research in molecular biology.
In 1968, Watson wrote The Double Helix, a non-fiction book on the double helix structure he had helped to discover.
Later in his life Watson was appointed as the head of the Human Genome Project at the National Institute of Health.
The renowned scientist married his wife Elizabeth Lewis in 1968.
He is survived by the couple’s two sons, Rufus Robert Watson and Duncan James Watson.