James D. Watson

Head of the Scientific Committee

James Watson was born in Chicago, Illinois, on the 6th of April 1928. A precocious student, he entered the University of Chicago at the age of 15 to study zoology. After graduating in 1947 he went on to Indiana University to do a Ph.D. before travelling to Copenhagen for a period of postdoctoral work.

In 1951 James Watson began work at the Cavendish Laboratory, the physics department of the University of Cambridge, where he met Francis Crick and embarked on what would become a celebrated collaboration. The work of Watson and Crick was intensely productive and within less than 18 months had produced groundbreaking results in research into DNA. Together, they went on to deduce the famous double helix structure of DNA which was published in Nature on the 25th April 1953. In recognition of their work, Watson and Crick, along with Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1962 for their research into the structure of nucleic acids.

In 1968 James Watson wrote The Double Helix, one of the “Modern Library’s” top 100 non-fiction books. In addition to this publication, several of Dr Watson’s other books have earned him great renown as an author. His first textbook, The Molecular Biology of the Gene, is widely acknowledged to have set a new benchmark for scientific textbooks, while his third publication, Recombinant DNA, shed new light on how organisms function.

James Watson’s achievements and standing were recognised in 1988 when he was appointed as the Head of the Human Genome Project. He held this position for four years and in 1994 he became President of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the United States. James Watson is currently Chancellor of Cold Spring Laboratory and Head of the Champalimaud Foundation’s Scientific Committee.

James D. Watson (left) with Aníbal Cavaco Silva, President of the Portuguese republic