James D. Watson’s death at 97 closes a chapter on one of the most influential and troubling lives in modern science. Researchers, institutions, and the public are now forced to weigh Watson’s towering scientific achievements against deep ethical and personal failures.
Watson’s fame can primarily be attributed to the 1953 discovery of the double‑helix structure of DNA, work carried out with Francis Crick at the University of Cambridge when Watson was just 25. Their Nature paper, “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” transformed biology by revealing how genetic information could be stored, copied, and passed between generations, helping to place DNA alongside Darwin’s evolution and Mendel’s laws of inheritance as a foundational pillar of the life sciences. The double helix birthed a newfound understanding of how DNA encodes and directs the synthesis of proteins, resulting in a multitude of advancements within the fields of genetics and molecular biology.
From the moment of discovery, the story of the double helix was entangled with ethical controversy over credit and consent. Watson and Crick’s model drew crucially on X‑ray diffraction data and interpretive insights produced by Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins at King’s College London, some of which were shared with them without Franklin’s knowledge or permission. Franklin died in 1958 and was ineligible when the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Watson, Crick, and Wilkins, leaving her role in the discovery largely unrecognized. Historians have since argued that Watson and Crick could and should have been explicit about their dependence on Franklin’s data, first to her and Wilkins and then publicly, a failure that continues to shape debates about credit, sexism, and power in science.
Beyond his early scientific work, Watson spent decades as an institution builder and strategist for molecular biology. At Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, NY, he served in multiple leadership roles, transforming a small research station into a powerhouse in cancer genetics and molecular biology, recruiting talent, expanding programs, and turning the campus into a global hub for DNA science. He also played a pivotal role in launching the Human Genome Project in 1990, using his prestige and political instincts to persuade scientists and lawmakers that sequencing the human genome was both feasible and worth massive public investment. His popular textbook, Molecular Biology of the Gene, trained generations of students, further amplifying his influence on how biology was taught and imagined.
Alongside these accomplishments was an unfortunate pattern of sexist, racist, and anti‑semitic remarks that gradually overshadowed his scientific legacy. In his bestselling account of the double helix, Watson caricatured Rosalind Franklin’s appearance and dismissed women’s place in science. He even wrote that “the best home for a feminist was in another person’s lab,” a line symbolic of his casual misogyny. A 2001 lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, in which he linked skin colour with sexual libido and thinness with ambition, marked a turning point for many colleagues, who saw these views as not just provocative but deeply prejudiced. In 2007, he publicly suggested that Black people were inherently less intelligent than white people and later remarked that “some anti‑semitism is justified,” comments that led Cold Spring Harbor to strip him of leadership roles. After he reiterated similar views years later, Cold Spring Harbor severed its ties with Watson entirely.
For those who knew him, Watson’s death doesn’t resolve the question of how to remember him; instead, it sharpens it. Some scientists, such as MIT molecular biologist Nancy Hopkins, recall a mentor who pushed young researchers, especially women, to persevere in hostile environments, even as his public statements on gender and race felt like a betrayal of those same commitments. Others emphasize his repeated, unrepentant remarks on race, gender, and genetics damaged not only his reputation but also public trust in science, reinforcing stereotypes at odds with the genetic complexity that his work helped reveal. As one Nobel laureate recounted, few individuals have shaped modern molecular biology as much as Watson, yet his prejudices now stand as a stark warning about how brilliance can coexist with, and even enable, profound moral blindness.
Watson liked to say that after his death, he would only become more famous, because DNA itself would grow ever more central to science and society. The double helix has indeed outlived its co‑discoverer, a symbol of both the extraordinary promise of molecular biology and the ethical complexities of the people and institutions that drive it. In the end, the story of James Watson is less a simple tale of hero or villain than a case study in how scientific greatness and personal failure can be tightly intertwined, and in how future generations must decide which lessons to carry forward.
