James Watson (97), a U.S. scientist who jointly won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discovering the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) that contains genes, died on the 6th (local time).
On the 9th, foreign media including AP and AFP reported that Watson died at a hospice facility on Long Island, New York. Watson received the 1962 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine along with British scientists Francis Crick (1916–2004) and Maurice Wilkins (1916–2004) for identifying the double-helix structure of DNA and advancing genetic research.
In 1953, the 25-year-old Watson and the 37-year-old Crick announced in the international journal Nature that DNA is a "twisted ladder" structure in which two strands coil around each other in a helix, opening a major shift in the life sciences. This revealed how cells synthesize proteins, identified gene mutations that cause disease, and opened the way to correct them for treatment. However, it also sparked a bioethics debate over whether artificially altering genes is proper.
The backbone of the DNA double helix is made of sugar and phosphate, and four bases—adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T)—link between them. Base A pairs only with T on the opposite strand, and G only with C, connecting the two strands like the rungs of a ladder. In 1968, Watson published the book The Double Helix, describing how he and Crick first determined the three-dimensional structure of DNA.
Watson later contributed to scientific progress by leading the Human Genome Project to decode all 3 billion base pairs that make up DNA. DNA makes proteins that govern life phenomena according to the order in which the bases are arranged. Genetic information is the base sequence itself. Some DNA base sequences are transcribed into messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) and then used as information for protein synthesis
But in his later years Watson was engulfed in controversy over racist remarks and was pushed out of academia. In a 2007 interview with British media, he said, "All our social policies are based on the premise that black and white people have equal intellectual capacity, but all the testing says not really," and added, "People who have to deal with black employees know that's not true," sparking an uproar.
Immediately after the interview was released, Watson fell from "the greatest biologist in history" to a racist, lectures and book events were canceled one after another, and he was forced off the podium. He belatedly apologized, saying, "I was foolish," but even his honorary post at the institute was stripped. Struggling financially, he even put his Nobel medal up for auction.
Watson also showed prejudice against women in his lifetime. It is hard to discuss the discovery of the DNA double helix without American woman scientist Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958), but the public focused only on Watson and Crick. While there was a male-dominated social climate at the time, even Watson did not treat Franklin as a fellow scientist.
Franklin took X-ray diffraction photographs that played a decisive role in determining the DNA structure in the late 1950s. Although Watson became convinced of the double-helix structure thanks to Franklin's research, he bluntly said, "Franklin does not wear lipstick or dress in a feminine way."
Franklin died in 1958 and did not become a co-recipient of the 1962 Nobel Prize. The Nobel is awarded only to the living. But even if she had lived, it is likely she would not have received the prize due to prejudice in academia.
References
Nature (1953), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/171737a0
Nature (2023), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01313-5