James Dewey Watson - Part II

June 14, 2010

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At &#&Indiana University&#& James Watson became a working scientist moving in the intellectual medium of The Phage Group.

James Watson's Ph.D. thesis, done under Luria's able guidance, at &#&Indiana University&#& was a study of the effect of hard X-rays on bacteriophage multiplication.

In September 1950 James Watson went to the University of Copenhagen in Denmark till 1951 for a year of postdoctoral research. During this year James first learned of the biomolecular research already commenced at the Cavendish Laboratory. Early in October 1951 he began to work at the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University in England.

James Watson soon met Francis Crick, who was twelve years older than Watson and, at the time, a graduate student studying protein structure. They discovered their common interest in solving the DNA structure.

Watson and Crick began together their research attempting to determine the chemical structure of living matter. They theorized about DNA and worked on their model of DNA structure. By recognizing the importance of X-ray diffraction photographs produced by Rosalind Franklin at King's College, London, they eventually arrived at the correct structure.

Watson was particularly impressed by Nobel laureate Linus Pauling' s use of model-building in determining the alpha-helix structure of protein, and both Watson and Crick were certain that the answer lay in model-building.

They failed in producing results in their initial research in the late fall of 1951, and because of this failure the directors of the laboratory ordered them not to continue with such investigation.

In spite of this decision, James Watson and Francis Crick, in secret, continued their work which resulted in a fabulous discovery on February 28, 1953. They proceeded to deduce the double helix structure of DNA of which all living matter is made.

The DNA molecule, Watson and Crick had found is shaped like a double helix, or "gently twisted ladder." The two chains of the helix unlink "like a zipper," and reproduce their missing halves. In this way, each molecule of DNA is able to create two identical copies of itself.

In June of the same year Watson and Crick published their theoretical paper in the British science journal Nature. Immediately this publication was a sensational success.

Their conclusions were supported by the experimental evidence simultaneously published by Wilkins, Franklin, and Raymond Goss.

Both scientists and their work became known all around the world. Their findings revolutionized the study of biology and genetics, it was considered by some other biologists and Nobel laureates as the most important scientific discovery of the 20th century.