BIOLOGY
DNA
James Dewey Watson
James Dewey Watson was born in Chicago, Illinois, US on the 6th of April, 1928 and lived in the south shore district. He was the son of James Dewey Watson and Margaret Jean Mitchell, and had one sister Elizabeth, two years younger. His father was a tailor from Scotland who later worked for a correspondence school, his wife’s father was a Scottish born tailor who married the daughter of Irish immigrants who arrived in the US about 1840. James attended for eight years Horace Mann Grammar School and for two years South Shore High School. He then attended the university of Chicago on a tuition scholarship from the age of 15 and had obtained a degree in Zoology in four years. Next he did a PhD in Zoology at the university of Indiana, with the emphasis on bacteriophage genetics. Between September 1950 and September 1951 he was in Denmark at the university of Copenhagen on a Merck National Research Council fellowship to do research in order to learn some nucleic acid biochemistry, but after seeing the x-ray diffraction picture realised that this might be the way to solve the DNA puzzle. S E Laria, his PhD supervisor arranged for Watson to switch to the Medical Research Council unit estabished in 1947, comprising Max Perutz and John Kendrew who were studying haemoglobin crystals by x-ray diffraction. The unit was housed in the Cavendish laboratories at the University of Cambridge, England, which was under the direction of Sir Laurence Bragg. Watson was now on a National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis Fellowship at the University of Cambridge and was based at Clare College with rooms on R staircase Memorial court. He married Elizabeth Lewis, a nineteen year old second year student at Radcliffe college, neighbouring Harvard in 1968 and had two sons Rufus and Duncan. © BA
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