James Watson

1928 – 2025 · died at about 97^[1][2]

Science & Invention

Fun Facts About James Watson

• James Watson was the first living Nobel laureate to auction his medal, which sold at Christie's in 2014 for $4.1 million.^[1]
• As a boy Watson appeared on the radio show Quiz Kids, and he entered the University of Chicago on a tuition scholarship at 15.^[1]
• Watson was a keen bird watcher who planned to study ornithology until reading Erwin Schrödinger's book What Is Life? turned him to genetics.^[1][3][4]
• Watson's original title for The Double Helix was "Honest Jim," and Harvard University Press dropped the book after Francis Crick and others objected.^[1]
• In 2007 Watson became the second person, after Craig Venter, to publish his fully sequenced genome online.^[1]
• Watson and Crick acknowledged in 1954 that without Rosalind Franklin's data, their DNA structure would have been most unlikely, if not impossible.^[1][5][6]
• James Watson was alive at the same time as Mark Zuckerberg — their lives overlapped for 41 years (1984–2025).^[1][2][7][8]
• James Watson shares a birthday with Raphael: both were born on April 6.^{[1][2][9][10]}

James Dewey Watson was an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he and Francis Crick co-authored an academic paper in Nature proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule, building on research by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling. In 1962, Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".^[1]

Contemporaries

Noam Chomsky

97 yr overlap

Jimmy Carter

96 yr overlap

Tu Youyou

95 yr overlap

Elizabeth II

94 yr overlap

Pope Benedict XVI

94 yr overlap

Yoko Ono

92 yr overlap

Wole Soyinka

91 yr overlap

Jane Goodall

91 yr overlap

Mikhail Gorbachev

91 yr overlap

Stan Lee

90 yr overlap

Desmond Tutu

90 yr overlap

Dalai Lama

90 yr overlap

Their World

Questions About James Watson

When was James Watson born?

James Watson was born on April 6, 1928, and died on November 6, 2025.

How old was James Watson at death?

James Watson was born on April 6, 1928, and died on November 6, 2025, at age 97.

What was James Watson known for?

James Watson was known for: Co-discovered the structure of DNA. James Dewey Watson was an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he and Francis Crick co-authored an academic paper in Nature proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule, building on research by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling. In 1962, Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".

Who was alive at the same time as James Watson?

James Watson's closest contemporary was Noam Chomsky. Their lives overlapped for 97 years.