James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA’s double helix, has died aged 97

James Watson, one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA, has died in a New York hospice facility at the age of 97. Along with fellow researchers Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of DNA’s double helix shape, which laid the groundwork for innumerable innovations throughout the field of biology.

After that revolutionary discovery, Watson went on to serve as the director, president and chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Under his direction, the laboratory expanded significantly, becoming a world leader in molecular biology. He was also the head of the Human Genome Project for two years before stepping down in protest of moves towards patenting gene sequences.

Despite all this, Watson told New Scientist in 2007 that he viewed the books he authored as his biggest accomplishment, saying: “The double helix was going to be found by someone. I speeded it up a little. But Francis Crick never would have written The Double Helix, nor would any of the other scientists involved.” Watson said at the time that he hoped his writing would encourage more young people to go into science.

He faced a great deal of controversy throughout his career. The very discovery of the structure of DNA was enabled by X-ray images taken by another researcher, Rosalind Franklin, whose work was not acknowledged in the 1953 paper that won Watson and Crick their Nobel prize, and Watson was criticised for downplaying her contributions. He was famously dismissive of other fields of biology, and frequently faced condemnation and even professional censure for comments about both other researchers and marginalised groups in general, which by 2007 led to his retirement from Cold Spring Harbor.

Despite his many controversies, his academic accomplishments place him as one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. His work opened the door to entirely new fields of study, bringing us insights on how hereditary information is stored, the relationships between species across the tree of life and new ways to treat genetic diseases.