James Dewey Watson (* 6 April 1928 in Chicago) is an US-American biochemist and discovered together with Francis Crick the molecular structure of the

Watson was a kind "miracle boy", because he had already attained a doctorate to 1950 to the Indiana University in Bloomington, the USA with a work over bacteriophages. 1951 he came to England, in order to dedicate itself to the study of the DNA molecule, first still without large success. Together with Francis Crick and including the results of the x-ray structure analysis of Rosalind Franklin and the of Erwin Chargaff he developed a Doppelhelix model of the DNA, to which 1953 of the public were presented and published in the magazine Nature, 1953, 171, 737-738 for deoxyribose structure under the title "A nucleic acid" then however at the Cavendish laboratory of the University of Cambridge. This memorable publication ended to emergency with the set of "It has escaped our notice that the specific pairity incoming goods have postulated immediately suggests A possible copying mechanism for the gene TIC material" (it did not escape our attention that the special mating, which we presuppose as given directly on a possible duplication mechanism for those genetic hereditary substance to close leave.)

But Watson as well as Crick and the Londoner Roentgen crystallographer Maurice Wilkins 1962 received the Nobelpreis for medicine.

1961 to 1976 he was a professor to the Harvard University and starting from 1976 director of the CSHL - Cold jump Harbor Laboratory OF Long Iceland, New York, the USA, whose president is he since 1994.

The Time_Magazine ranks Watson among the 100 most influential personalities 20. Century. Its book the Doppelhelix, in which it describes the discovery of the DNA structure from its personal view, became the international best-seller. Watson is also Mitinitiator of the human Genome Project. Into the headlines it came in recent time, because it pleads not only for mapping the human gene COM, but also for the killing of obstructed unborn life (S. Eugenik).

Literature

• James D. Watson: The Doppelhelix. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1997. ISBN 3499602555
• James D. Watson: Genes, Girls and Gamow. Memories of a genius. Piper publishing house, Munich 2003. ISBN 349204428X
• Ernst Peter Fischer: At the beginning was the Doppelhelix. James D. Watson and the new science of the life. Ullstein publishing house, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-550-07566-9

Related links

• James D. Watson: biographie
• James D. Watson - the double Helix (book review)
• James Watson - Biography (English)
• letters ton nature: Molecular structure OF Nucleic Acids (original publication of Watson and Crick to the DNA structure 1953)

Articles in category "James Watson"

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