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James Dewey Watson, 1928-
Nobel Prize-winning scientist James Dewey Watson was honored, with his collaborator Francis Crick, for their formulation of the double-helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid in 1953. DNA, as it is abbreviated, is the carrier of genetic information in nearly all living organisms. Watson received his Ph.D. in zoology and started out working on the genetics of birds and the effect of viruses on DNA. In 1952, he shifted to discovering DNA's structure. Working in England with Crick, and after several failures, he two proposed the elegant double-helical configuration in March 1953. Watson characterized this as discovering "the secret of life," since it revealed the physical and chemical basis of heredity. Returning to America, with positions at Caltech and then Harvard, Watson shifted yet again to working on RNA (ribonucleic acid), the substance that carries out the instructions dictated by DNA.
Jack Beal, 1995 |