Watson died Thursday at a hospice in East Northport, Long Island, at the age of 97. The scientist's death was confirmed on Friday by his son Duncan. He said Watson was transferred to hospice earlier this week from the hospital where he was being treated for an infection.
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James D. Watson has died. Biography of the Nobel Prize winner
Watson was born in 1928 in Chicago. In 1953, together with Francis Crick, he developed a spatial model of the DNA helix, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962. He was one of the originators and the first head of the “Human Genome Project” program to sequence the entire human genome.
From 1968 until his retirement in 2007, he was director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. He later led work on the genetic basis of mental illnesses, especially schizophrenia. He was one of the first people in the world to know the detailed sequence of his own genome.
The author of the book about the Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Henryk Cioczek, compared him in 2023 in an interview with PAP to Einstein and Curie-Skłodowska. — Before Watson, it was not known how genetic information was transmitted from generation to generation, he explained.
He said that in 2008 he invited Professor Watson and his wife to Poland, where they visited for the first time. — We started our visit in Warsaw, then Lublin and Kraków. Considered the king of geneticists, Watson received a truly royal reception. He was welcomed, among others, at the Warsaw Castle, the Jagiellonian University, the University of Warsaw, the Medical University of Lublin, the Polish Academy of Sciences – Cioczek listed.
“I regret that I came to Poland so late. It was the most wonderful trip for me in terms of organization, sightseeing and meetings with scientists,” the Polish doctor quoted Watson as saying.
Watson gave many lectures in Poland and held a number of meetings with scientists and students. This resulted in some students and scientists coming to his Cold Spring Harbor laboratory. According to the author of the book, Watson was a true friend of Poland and Poles.
