![]() During this visit they published several papers on the general principles of virus construction. In 1955-1956 he was back in the Cavendish, again working with Crick. There he collaborated with Alexander Rich in X-ray diffraction studies of RNA. This objective was achieved in late June 1952, when use of the Cavendish’s newly constructed rotating anode X-ray tubes allowed an unambiguous demonstration of the helical construction of the virus.įrom 1953 to 1955, Watson was at the California Institute of Technology as Senior Research Fellow in Biology. His object was to see if its chemical sub-units, earlier revealed by the elegant experiments of Schramm, were helically arranged. Their second effort based upon more experimental evidence and better appreciation of the nucleic acid literature, resulted, early in March 1953, in the proposal of the complementary double-helical configuration.Īt the same time, he was experimentally investigating the structure of TMV, using X-ray diffraction techniques. Their first serious effort, in the late fall of 1951, was unsatisfactory. They thought it should be possible to correctly guess its structure, given both the experimental evidence at King’s College plus careful examination of the possible stereochemical configurations of polynucleotide chains. He soon met Crick and discovered their common interest in solving the DNA structure. Fortunately this proved possible when Luria, in early August 1951, arranged with John Kendrew for him to work at the Cavendish Laboratory, where he started work in early October 1951. This greatly stimulated him to change the direction of his research toward the structural chemistry of nucleic acids and proteins. There at a Symposium, late in May, he met Maurice Wilkins and saw for the first time the X-ray diffraction pattern of crystalline DNA. During the spring of 1951, he went with Kalckar to the Zoological Station at Naples. Again he worked with bacterial viruses, attempting to study the fate of DNA of infecting virus particles. Part of the year was spent with the biochemist Herman Kalckar, the remainder with the microbiologist Ole Maaløe. thesis, done under Luria’s able guidance, was a study of the effect of hard X-rays on bacteriophage multiplication.įrom September 1950 to September 1951 he spent his first postdoctoral year in Copenhagen as a Merck Fellow of the National Research Council. Luria, the Italian-born microbiologist then on the staff of Indiana’s Bacteriology Department. At Indiana, he was deeply influenced both by the geneticists H. This became possible when he received a Fellowship for graduate study in Zoology at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he received his Ph.D. ![]() During these years his boyhood interest in bird-watching had matured into a serious desire to learn genetics. He then received a tuition scholarship to the University of Chicago, and in the summer of 1943 entered their experimental four-year college. Young Watson’s entire boyhood was spent in Chicago where he attended for eight years Horace Mann Grammar School and for two years South Shore High School. His mother’s father was a Scottish-born tailor married to a daughter of Irish immigrants who arrived in the United States about 1840. His father’s ancestors were originally of English descent and had lived in the midwest for several generations. ![]() Watson, a businessman, and Jean Mitchell. J ames Dewey Watson was born in Chicago, Ill., on April 6th, 1928, as the only son of James D. Share via Email: James Watson – Biographical Share this content via Email.Share on LinkedIn: James Watson – Biographical Share this content on LinkedIn.Tweet: James Watson – Biographical Share this content on Twitter.Share on Facebook: James Watson – Biographical Share this content on Facebook.
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