James Watson

James Dewey Watson For my biography, I decided to write about the biologist James Dewey Watson. He was born during the 1920’s. Along the side of Francis Crick, he was famous for the discovery of the DNA double helix. The way we look at the composition of the human body is different because of them and their research. James Watson was born on April 5, 1928 to the parents of James D. Watson and Jean Mitchell. His father back round was of English descent and his mother’s back round was of the Scottish descent. He was born in the city of Chicago. He lived in Chicago for his entire childhood and teenage years. He did 8 years of Grammar school at Horace Mann Grammar school and then went to South Shore High School for 2 years which he graduated in 1943. He the received a scholarship to the University of Chicago where he was part of the experimental 4 year program. After the 4 years he got a Bachelors of Sciences in Zoology which was in 1947. After his years at the university of Chicago he moved on to Indiana university where he did a fellowship and got his Ph.D. in Zoology in 1950. While he was the he showed interest in bird watching and it slowly moved on to genetics. During his first year after getting his doctorate he spent it in Copenhagen, Denmark where he study the first part of the year with biochemist Herman Kalckar and the reminder of that year with microbiologist Ole Maaloe, during that year study the fate of DNA of infecting virus particles. During which certain parts helped with his further research of the double helix. After spending time in Copenhagen he was offered to work in the Cavendish laboratory that is he met Francis Crick. Watson and Crick both realized that they shared interests in DNA structure. They thought they could guess the correct structure of the DNA plus the possible sterochemical configuration of polynucleotide chains. The first run at the process was a failure in the late fall