At the time of their discovery, there was a race to find the structure of genes. James elaborated on the scientific race to discovery, “Well, it was a small race in the sense that it was a group at King's College, and then I was interested in it when I was not there, and the King's College people didn't want me, so I went to Cambridge and through my enormous, you know, luck discovered Francis Crick, who was in a, you know, day of being in the same room, all we wanted to talk about was what was the structure of DNA because it seemed, you know, to be the most important molecule. It carried instructions. We didn't know how to do it, but I was - my background was in genetics. Francis' background was originally in physics.”
There was an influential book written by Erwin Schrodinger on wave mechanics called "What is Life?” The book written by the famous physicist would aid Watson and Frick in their experiments. They realized that the information in genes could somehow be encoded. The two read the book when it was released and were motivated from being spectators to discoverers in the scientific realm.
James contributed many discoveries in the field of medicine. He did several experiments involving bacteria and viruses. It is known that he along with his team were trying to work on a virus which was known to be harmful to bacteria but not for human cells. He was also the member of Phage Group. He also used X-rays to destroy the bacterial virus.
In 1956, James started working at Harvard University where he did research on RNA. He wanted to know that how important RNA was for transmitting the genetic information. Later in 1968, James was offered a position of director at the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory and he happily accepted the offer. It is known that James also worked on the Human Genome Project.
James doesn’t believe in any religion because he is man of science. In 1968, he decided to get married to his wife, Elizabeth Watson. Prior to the marriage, her name was Elizabeth Lewis. After their marriage, James’s wife gave birth to two children. The name of James’ son is Rufus Robert Watson and the name of his second son is Duncan James Watson. It is known that his elder son suffers from schizophrenia, a serious mental disorder.
The annual salary of James is not known but he made the news for selling his Nobel Prize medal to a Russian businessman for 4 million dollars. The buyer was one of the richest men in Russia and Watson donated the funds to charity.
Return to the previous page| Birth Date: | 6 Apr, 1928 |
| Age: | 92 yrs |
| Citizenship: | United States of America |
| Birth Place: | Chicago |
| Education: | Indiana University Bloomington University of Chicago |
| Gender: | Male |
| Description: | American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist |
| Net Worth 2020: | 16.1 billion |
