James Watson’s lifelong friend and protégé on his complicated legacy
Update: 2025-11-12
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James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for co-discovering the structure of DNA, died last week at the age of 97. He was a scientific giant, but in the final two decades of his life, he falsely stated that women and Black people are, as populations, not as smart as white men.
Nancy Hopkins knew Watson better than most, having first worked with him when she was just an undergraduate. She is a retired MIT professor known for her work on zebrafish as a cancer model, and for her advocacy on behalf of women in science.
Today, she is trying to reconcile her “lifelong friend,” the Watson one who encouraged her and other women to go into molecular biology, with the one who emerged late in life.
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