James D Watson is gone.
At 97, the celebrated American molecular biologist who helped reveal DNA’s twisting ladder, the double helix code that shapes every living thing, has died. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, where he spent much of his life, confirmed the news.
The New York Times reported that the man behind one of the most consequential scientific journeys of the twentieth century passed away this week at a hospice on Long Island.
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Watson’s death closes the curtain on a career that transformed modern science. Yet the story he leaves behind is complicated. It is part discovery and daring, part rivalry and controversy, a life that never stopped stirring debate.
Before the Nobel Prize in 1962, before the fame, before the storm over his later remarks, there was a quick, curious, and slightly awkward young man trying to make sense of the living world.
He travelled through post-war Europe with a mind tuned to puzzles, certain that the secret he was seeking sat somewhere deep inside t
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