James Watson, Nobel Prize-winning co-discoverer of DNA’s double-helix structure, dead at 97

Fox News ^ | 11/7/2025 | Sophia Compton

[sopo]

James Watson, who co-discovered the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953, has died at age 97.

Born in Chicago in 1928, Watson made the groundbreaking discovery at just 24 years old alongside British physicist Francis Crick. Watson died in hospice care after a brief illness, his son confirmed Friday, according to The Associated Press.

"As a scientist, his and Francis Crick’s determination of the structure of DNA, based on data from Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins and their colleagues at King’s College London, was a pivotal moment in the life sciences," Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Watson’s former research institution, said in a statement Friday.

[ek_hornbeck]

The impressive thing about Watson's career is that he was not only a first-class scientist in his youth, but later in life he was a great educator (authoring a couple of molecular biology textbooks that are still the standard in the field) and a very capable administrator who built up Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory on Long Island from a backwater to a powerhouse.

People I know who've met Watson told two different stories. Those who met him as a younger man found him insufferably arrogant, those who met him in his later decades found him to be warm and friendly, as you apparently did.