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

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.

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