Nobel Prize laureate James D. Watson speaks at a press conference to announce that a six-country consortium has successfully drawn up a complete map of the human genome. Photo by AFP
New York: The Nobel laureate co-credited with the discovery of DNA's double-helix structure, James Watson has died aged 97.
The eminent American biologist died Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, said the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career.
Watson went down as among the 20th century's most storied scientists for his 1953 discovery of the double helix, a breakthrough made with research partner Francis Crick.
Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, Watson shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for their momentous work that gave rise to modern biology and opened the door to insights including on genetic code and protein synthesis.
That ushered in a new era of modern life, allowing for revolutionary technologies in medicine, forensics and genetics, like criminal DNA testing or genetically manipulated plants.
American scientist James Watson gives a press conference, on 20 October 1962 in Harvard University, after being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Photo by AFP
Watson was just 25 when he joined in on one of science's greatest discoveries. He later went on to do groundbreaking work in cancer research and mapping the human genome.
His 1968 memoir "The Double Helix" was a best-seller praised for its breezy writing about fierce competition in the name of scientific advancement.
Twisting ladder
Born on April 6, 1928 in Chicago, Illinois, at the aqe of 15 James Dewey Watson won a scholarship to the University of Chicago.
He received a Ph.D. in zoology in 1950 from Indiana University Bloomington, and embarked on an academic path that took him to European universities including Cambridge, where he met Crick and began a historic partnership.
Working with X-ray images obtained by Franklin and Wilkins, researchers at King's College in London, Watson and Crick started parsing out the double helix.
Their first serious effort came up short. The now iconic depiction resembles a twisting ladder. Their model also showed how the DNA molecule could duplicate itself, answering a fundamental question in the field of genetics.
Watson and Crick published their findings in the British journal "Nature" in 1953 to great acclaim.
Watson taught at Harvard for 15 years before becoming director of what today is known as the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which he transformed into a global hub of molecular biology research.
From 1988 to 1992, Watson was one of the directors of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, where he oversaw the mapping of the genes in the human chromosomes.
He shared two sons, Rufus and Duncan, with his wife Elizabeth.
And he received honorary degrees from dozens of universities, wrote many books and was heavily decorated. Jeff Goldblum played him in a BBC-produced film about the double helix,
