James Watson, a renowned molecular biologist and one of the Nobel Prize winners for discovering the structure of DNA, died Thursday after a brief illness, according to a statement from his former employer.
He was 97.
His death was confirmed by a spokesperson with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he spent the bulk of his career, who cited he died following a brief illness.
Watson, whose mission it was to figure out what the molecule of life looks like, won a Nobel Prize for it in 1962. He later became the first director of the groundbreaking Human Genome Project and the first living recipient to sell a Nobel Prize, some of which went toward raising money for scientific research.
“I think early on, I wanted to do something important with my life. I still want to think about science and really nothing else,” Watson told CNN in 2013. “Being driven by the desire to find the truth, that’s really my legacy. The truth, sometimes you don’t find it and it’s complicated, but what you always have is that if you can start with the truth, it’s helpful.”
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