James D. Watson

Born in Illinois in 1928, James Watson shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine with two Brtish scientists, Francis Crick and Maurice Watkins in 1962. The prize was awarded for their roles in elucidation of the structure of DNA, the key molecule of hereditiy. Watson and Crick developed a model of the molecule by trial and error based on very early results from X-ray cryustallography performed in Watkins Laboratory. Once they arrived at the structure, they immediately realized how the DNA molecule could carry information and code for the amino acid sequence of proteins.

Tracey Tyndale E-mailed the following ...

"in a laboratory run by the father of Maurice Watkins worked a Physical Chemist by the name of Rosalind Franklin. She was a top notch Chemist, researcher & her work in X-ray crystallography was very precise, yet the fact she was a woman tended to infuriate many of her male contemporaries, including young Maurice, who was somewhat clumsy when it came to precision work, & with whom she had many a run in with in the lab. ... some of the X-ray images of DNA she had been working on were stolen, & soon after wound up in the possession of some aquaintences of Maurice Watkins, namely Watson & Crick, who quickly scooped her emerging discovery, publishing it as their own. Incidentally, Franklin did publish her findings in the same journal issue as did Watson & Crick, however, before the Nobel Prize was awarded, she passed away from cancer(?) ... since Noble Prizes can not be awarded post humssly, ..."

Tracey is correct! Read Watson's The Double Helix. for more of the intrigue