Born: 6 April 1928 · Died: 6 November 2025 · Age at death: 97
How old was James Watson when he died?
James Watson died aged 97. He was born on 6 April 1928 and died on 6 November 2025.
American biologist who co-discovered the double-helix structure of DNA with Francis Crick and shared the Nobel Prize
Did you know?He became one of the first people to have his entire personal genome sequenced and published online for scientific research.
Quick facts
Date of birth6 April 1928
Date of death6 November 2025
Age at death97
NationalityAmerican
BirthplaceChicago, United States
Occupationbiologist, geneticist, zoologist
Editor's Take:
James Watson helped solve one of biology's greatest puzzles. A prodigy from Chicago, he entered university at 15. At Cambridge in 1953, he and Francis Crick worked out the double-helix structure of DNA. Their model drew heavily on X-ray work by Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. Watson, Crick and Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize. His candid memoir, The Double Helix, was a bestseller. He later led the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and helped launch the Human Genome Project. Repeated racist remarks later cost him his honorary titles.
James Dewey Watson (April 6, 1928 – November 6, 2025) was an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick co-authored an academic paper on DNA entitled, "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid".
