Originally, Watson was drawn into molecular biology by the work of Salvador Luria. Career and research Luria, Delbrück, and the Phage Group He received his PhD degree from Indiana University in 1950 Salvador Luria was his doctoral advisor. In 1947 Watson left the University of Chicago to become a graduate student at Indiana University, attracted by the presence at Bloomington of the 1946 Nobel Prize winner Hermann Joseph Muller, who in crucial papers published in 1922, 1929, and in the 1930s had laid out all the basic properties of the heredity molecule that Schrödinger presented in his 1944 book. In his autobiography, Avoid Boring People, Watson described the University of Chicago as an "idyllic academic institution where he was instilled with the capacity for critical thought and an ethical compulsion not to suffer fools who impeded his search for truth", in contrast to his description of later experiences. Watson earned his BS degree in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1947.
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Īfter reading Erwin Schrödinger's book, What Is Life? in 1946, Watson changed his professional ambitions from the study of ornithology to genetics. Among his professors was Louis Leon Thurstone from whom Watson learned about factor analysis, which he would later reference on his controversial views on race. Thanks to the liberal policy of university president Robert Hutchins, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he was awarded a tuition scholarship, at the age of 15. Watson appeared on Quiz Kids, a popular radio show that challenged bright youngsters to answer questions. He was fascinated with bird watching, a hobby shared with his father, so he considered majoring in ornithology. Watson grew up on the south side of Chicago and attended public schools, including Horace Mann Grammar School and South Shore High School. Watson said, "The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn't believe in God." Raised Catholic, he later described himself as "an escapee from the Catholic religion". His mother's father, Lauchlin Mitchell, a tailor, was from Glasgow, Scotland, and her mother, Lizzie Gleason, was the child of parents from County Tipperary, Ireland. Watson, a businessman descended mostly from colonial English immigrants to America. Watson was born in Chicago on April 6, 1928, as the only son of Jean (née Mitchell) and James D. Between 19, Watson was associated with the National Institutes of Health, helping to establish the Human Genome Project, which completed the task of mapping the human genome in 2003. Watson has written many science books, including the textbook Molecular Biology of the Gene (1965) and his bestselling book The Double Helix (1968). In 2019, following the broadcast of a documentary in which Watson reiterated these views on race and genetics, CSHL revoked his honorary titles and severed all ties with him. He was then appointed chancellor, serving until he resigned in 2007 after making comments claiming that there is a genetic link between intelligence and race.
In 1994, he started as president and served for 10 years. At CSHL, he shifted his research emphasis to the study of cancer, along with making it a world-leading research center in molecular biology. From 1956 to 1976, Watson was on the faculty of the Harvard University Biology Department, promoting research in molecular biology.įrom 1968, Watson served as director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), greatly expanding its level of funding and research.
Following a post-doctoral year at the University of Copenhagen with Herman Kalckar and Ole Maaløe, Watson worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in England, where he first met his future collaborator Francis Crick. Watson earned degrees at the University of Chicago ( BS, 1947) and Indiana University (PhD, 1950).
In subsequent years, it has been recognized that Watson and his colleagues did not properly attribute colleague Rosalind Franklin for her contributions to the discovery of the double helix structure. Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.
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