James Watson, Ph.D.
Chancellor Emeritus at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
James Watson, Ph.D. is the Chancellor Emeritus of the Laboratory of Quantitative Biology at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Dr. Watson received a Bachelors of Science from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from Indiana University, both in zoology. Following a National Research Fellowship in Copenhagen, he conducted research o at the University of Cambridge, England, where he discovered the double helix structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) with Francis Crick. This research emphasized a concept central to the emerging field of molecular biology: understanding the structure of a molecule can give clues about how it functions. Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins at King’s College in London, who confirmed the DNA structure using X-ray crystallography, shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for their discovery.
Watson has played a significant role in the development of science policy, from the War on Cancer, through the debates over the use of recombinant DNA, to promoting the Human Genome Project. From 1988 to 1992, he ran the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health.