James Watson, 1928-2025
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Erik is falling down on his job of obituarying notable scumbags, so I will have to step in.
James D. Watson died this week at 97. He acquired his Nobel Prize by stealing Rosalind Franklin’s x-ray data that showed that DNA has a helical structure, and then a lucky guess during a time when lots of guesses were being tossed around by lots of people.
He celebrated his theft and lucky guess in a book, The Double Helix, in which he did what he could to minimize Franklin’s contributions.
In later life, he was noted for his willingness to express his sexism and racism in public, along with other varieties of scientific bullshit. Here’s his obituary in the New York Times. Here’s a list of quotes from him.
The structure of DNA was an enormous step forward in understanding life of all kinds and the basis for a great many improvements in health care. It’s even the basis for a just-released video series. At the time that Watson and Francis Crick made their lucky guess, there were many hypothetical structures being proposed. Linus Pauling was in that competition as well. Watson and Crick got it right.
A personal sidenote: When Anne Sayre’s biography of Franklin was published, I invited her to give an all-laboratory colloquium at the Los Alamos National Laboratoy. At that time, the colloquium was held regularly on Tuesday mornings and was open to all the staff, a tradition from the Manhattan Project. Any staff member could suggest a speaker. It was the first time since I joined the Lab in 1965 that a woman had been the speaker.
Sayre knew Franklin personally, and her biography is now seen to attribute too much feminism to Franklin, but it was a counter to Watson’s self-promotion and the only biography available at the time.