Bright-eyed, 55 years after cracking the code of life

On Thursday the 18th September James Watson, the ‘Father of Modern Genetics’ arrived in Dublin to celebrate the 50th anniversary of TCD Genetics Department. In an exclusive Trinity News interview he praised Trinity as a ‘Lovely location’ with ‘a reputation as a place where you get a very good education’. He regards the Department of Genetics as ‘unique’ in that it was set up in the early years of modern genetics, compared to similar departments in other universities. He donated a painting to the Genetics Department and spoke at the Symposium Dinner that Thursday evening.

“James Watson” is a name learnt by all budding biologists as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA, the molecule responsible for heredity in almost all living things. The discovery, published in 1953, won Watson and his co-researchers Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Famously, a fourth contributor, Rosalind Franklin, did not live to share in the Nobel Prize (which is not awarded posthumously).

Watson’s name hit the headlines in 2007 for comments made to the Sunday Times Magazine suggesting that black people may be genetically less intelligent than white people. When talking to me he insists that he never intended to talk about this, noting that ‘depending on how you judge somebody you get very different answers’.

It is certainly true that in 2007, five days after these comments were published, Watson issued an apology stating he was ‘mortified’ and saying that he could ony ‘apologise unreservedly’.

When I mention James Flynn, a researcher into changing IQ scores over time, who recently argued for a confrontation of issues surrounding race and IQ Watson exclaims ‘Oh I was just with James Flynn – He came to our laboratory!’ he goes on to claim Flynn is ‘not a psychologist he’s a moral philosopher!’ but also notes ‘he’s an extremely nice person’. On Flynn’s work he comments ‘for some reason people when they’re eighteen now know more than they did fifty years ago’ but thinks ‘there’s no evidence that people when they’re thirty are any brighter than they were’.

Genetics is always a controversial issue, it certainly seems Watson has run into more than his fair share of dispute, the most famous being lack of credit given to Franklin for the discovery of the DNA structure. Watson and Crick used Frankilin’s unpublished data in the lead up to their big discovery and Watson has since made damning remarks about her role in his books such as his comment “The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person’s lab” in his The Double Helix. However in an epilogue to the same book he describes these ‘initial impressions’ as ‘often wrong’ and said that later he and Crick came to ‘appreciate greatly her personal honesty and generosity.’

Indeed the gentle, wizened but enthusiastic man sitting opposite me in the Shelbourne Hotel does not seem malicious. He describes Cambridge as the most interesting university that he worked at, noting that it was different than anything he’d ever seen, having come straight from the Midwestern United States.

Playing down his incredibly young student achievements, enrolling at the University of Chicago when only 15 and achieving his Ph.D at 22 Watson tells me that ‘I never felt I was a freak’ as Chicago university had a programme for about thirty 15 year olds so ‘there were others’. Having said that he adds ‘The human brain at 15 . . . learns fast’ and commends the fact that he was ‘forced to think’.

As the discussion turns to recent politics and America Watson affirms his disapproval of the Iraq war; ‘Just totally indefensible’ and when asked about the situation regarding the USA, Russia and Georgia states with a chuckle that ‘I don’t think we should have too many allies’. In his time as a professor at Harvard Watson was politically active both in favour of withdrawing forces from Vietnam and against nuclear proliferation in 1975 to the Ford Presidency.

As we approach the end of our interview he offers this advice : ‘I guess my rule is “Do something as soon as you can” . . . if you realise you’ve got to take a course in some subject you take it as soon as you can – don’t put it off!’ and with a grin ‘[we] will soon be able to read the messages in human DNA and, err: read them first!’