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DNA co-discoverer James Watson dies at 97

2025-11-07 22:34:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Nobel Prize-winning American scientist James Watson, one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, has died at the age of 97. In one of the greatest breakthroughs of the 20th century, he identified the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953 with British scientist Francis Crick, paving the way for rapid advances in molecular biology.

Watson's death was confirmed by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he worked and conducted research for decades. Watson shared the Nobel Prize in 1962 with Maurice Wilkins and Crick for the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA. DNA was discovered in 1869, but researchers had not yet figured out its structure, and it was not until 1943 that scientists realized that DNA made up the genetic material in cells.

Watson sold his Nobel gold medal at auction for $4.8 million (£3.6 million) in 2014, saying he was giving it up because he felt ostracized by the scientific community after his remarks on race. A Russian billionaire bought it for $4.8 million and promptly returned it to him.

Watson was born in Chicago in April 1928 to Jean and James, descendants of English, Scottish, and Irish settlers. He won a scholarship to study at the University of Chicago at the age of 15. There, he became interested in the new technique of diffraction, in which X-rays were reflected off atoms to reveal their internal structures.

To pursue his research on the structure of DNA, he went to Cambridge, where he met Crick, with whom he began to build large-scale models of possible structures for DNA. Later, after his scientific discovery, Watson and his wife, Elizabeth, moved to Harvard, where he became a professor of biology. The couple had two sons - one of whom suffered from schizophrenia. In 1968, he took over the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York state - a long-standing institution that is credited with transforming it into one of the world's most prominent scientific research institutes. /CNA