A scientific giant and Nobel laureate overshadowed by bigotry

BY THE time James Watson died earlier this month at the age of 97, he was one of the world's most famous - and infamous - scientists.

- F D FLAM

JAMES Watson, the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA's double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks. | AFP

(AFP)

In 1953, he and three fellow researchers co-discovered the double-helix structure of DNA - a breakthrough that unlocked the secrets of how life works. The discovery revealed how a molecule could store and copy genetic information, providing a chemical mechanism for heredity, evolution and the immense diversity of life that gave rise to what Charles Darwin famously described as "endless forms most beautiful".

But Watson's legacy is complicated by his later history of bigotry and racism, including years of denigrating comments about people of African descent, women and gay people.

His views first gained widespread public notice in a 2007 interview when he told the Sunday Times of London that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospects of Africa", suggesting that black people were intellectually inferior to white people. "All our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really," he was quoted as saying.

The patterned continued in interviews, and in his 2007 book, Avoid Boring People - after which he was shunned by most of his former scientific colleagues. And yet, even as Watson clung to his racist and bigoted theories, the understanding of DNA's structure and code-carrying function led to discoveries that dispelled such theories, showing that we all share a recent common origin in Africa.

I had the chance to hear Watson speak in 2005, two years before his racist views were widely known. It was during a field trip to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, which he had directed for 25 years and later served as its chancellor.