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n 1950, Watson joined the Cavendish laboratories at a time when Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, and Linus Pauling were racing to determine the structure of DNA. The X-ray crystallography experiments of Franklin and Wilkins provided much information about DNA - in particular that DNA was a molecule in which two "strands" formed a tightly linked pair. Crick and Watson made the intuitive leap:
in 1953, they proposed that the structure of DNA was a winding helix in which pairs of bases (adenine paired with thymine and guanine paired with cytosine) held the two strands together. The Watson-Crick model of the DNA double helix provided enormous impetus for research in the emerging fields of molecular genetics and biochemistry, and Crick, Watson, and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962.
In subsequent decades, Watson taught at Harvard and CalTech, and he became director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. He has made considerable contributions to the understanding of the genetic code, in which triplets of DNA base pairs identify amino acids and thereby control protein synthesis facilitated by DNA templates.
Watson's successful association with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was an unexpected development. Known to leave his shoes untied because of his absentmindedness, Watson nevertheless became a brilliant fundraiser and advocate for basic research in science. After he took on the directorship in 1968, the laboratory became one of the world's leading research centers for molecular biology - and one of the most well endowed. From 1988 to 1992, his scientific achievement and his success as an administrator led to his appointment as the head of the Human Genome Project at the NIH. In January 1994, at the age of 65, he ceased being director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and assumed the title of president. Ten years later, he assumed the title of chancellor. |
