Watson was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 6th, 1928. He was born to James D. Watson and Jean Mitchell. He was the brother of Elizabeth Jean Watson. He grew up in Chicago, he went from grade school to college there. James D.
Watson was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1928. He lived there till he was in highschool. He had went to Horace Mann Grammar grade school for eight years, and he had went to South Shore High School for two years. He was enrolled into University of Chicago when he was fifteen, to further his education with a scholarship. He attended college at the University of Chicago and Indiana University. He has two children, Rufus Robert Watson and Duncan James Watson. Watson discovered and studied the structure of DNA. (deoxyribonucleic acid) Watson often spent his time during his childhood bird-watching.
He had decided to become a major in ornithology (the scientific study of birds), but he had read a book by Edwin Schrodinger called, “What is Life.” This book inspired him to chose to go into genetic research. He received his B.S.
degree from University of Chicago, and his PhD from Indiana University. While he was in college, he was further inspired by Hermann Joseph Muller a geneticist, and Salvador Luria, the Italian microbiologist. When studying for his PhD, he was getting help from Luria, with hard x-rays on bacteriophage multiplication. In his postdoctoral phase, he had spent half the year with Herman Kalkar, the Biochemist. He had spent the other half with Ole Maaloe, the Microbiologist. He had been studying bacterial viruses, and attempting to study the DNA infecting viruses. When he graduated from college, Watson had a B.S.
degree in Zoology so he could study genetics. During his time of study, he was credited for the co-discovery of the thing that flows through your body called DNA. He worked on bacteriophages at the University of Copenhagen. During his work at The University of Copenhagen, he had gone to a conference in Italy in 1951, he met a scientist, Maurice Wilkins, who was studying the structure of DNA in London, at King’s College.
