Portions of this entry contributed by Ashwat Rishi

American biochemist and Nobel laureate who helped to determine the structure of the nucleic acid known as DNA. Born in Chicago, Watson received a Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1950 (at age 22) and joined the faculty of Harvard University in 1955. From 1951 to 1953, he did postgraduate research with the British biophysicist Francis Crick at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.

Based on work done at the laboratory of the British biophysicist Maurice Wilkins, Watson and Crick worked out the double helix structure of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule, a substance that transmits the genetic characteristics from one generation to the next. Experimental proof for their model was later provided by the American biochemist Arthur Kornberg. For their work on the DNA molecule, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

In 1968, Watson became director of the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory of Quantitative Biology, in New York State. Watson wrote The Double Helix (1968), a very entertaining and readable account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. From 1988 to 1992, at the National Institutes of Health, Watson helped direct the Human Genome Project, an ambitious project with the goal of mapping the entire sequence of human DNA. Watson is known for a somewhat abrasive personality and for leaving out all credit to Rosalind Franklin for her contributions to the understanding of DNA. In fact, it was Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction experiments which provided Crick and Watson with the final piece of the puzzle.

Avery, Crick, Franklin (Rosalind), Kornberg, Wilkins