James Watson, discoverer of DNA structure, dies

One of the outstanding scientists of the 20th century, American biologist and geneticist James Watson died on November 6 at the age of 97. Information about his death on November 7 was confirmed by the scientist’s son Duncan, The New York Times reported. Watson died at a hospice in East Northport on Long Island, New York, where he had been transferred from a hospital where he was being treated for an infection.

Watson is known as one of the discoverers of DNA, having deciphered its structure together with Francis Crick in 1953.

Watson and Crick, along with one of the authors of DNA X-rays, Maurice Wilkins, received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Rosalind Franklin, under whose leadership Raymond Gosling obtained key photographs for the discovery of the double-helical structure, did not live to see the award; Along with the circumstances surrounding the transmission of the photographs to Wilkins, Watson and Crick, of which Franklin was unaware, this became the basis for a debate about scientific ethics at King's College London.

Since the 1990s, Watson has repeatedly made scandalous statements. In an interview with The Sunday Times in 2007, he said that, according to some studies, the intellectual abilities of white and black people differ. For this, he was fired from his post as director of the Cold Spring Harbor Scientific Institute, which he had held since 1968.

Watson repeated these claims in a documentary released in 2019. “There are differences in intelligence tests between whites and blacks. I would say that this difference is ... genetic,” the scientist said. After this, he was stripped of his honorary titles.