James Watson won a Noble Prize for his work discovering the double helix structure of DNA, and now that award is up for auction.
Christie's Auction House will place the 1962 Noble Prize in Medicine up for bid on December 4, 2014. The rare, over-sized coin is projected to sell for between $2.5 million and $3.5 million.
In addition to the historic award, the auction house will also be offering handwritten notes, created by Watson, for his acceptance speech. Those items are expected to fetch between $300,000 and $400,000, while a corrected draft of the speech should bring in around $100,000 less than those estimates.
Watson won the award, more than five decades ago, along with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for their work analyzing the structure of the genetic code. Now, he is donating the award to fund further scientific projects.
"I look forward to making further philanthropic gifts to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the University of Chicago, and Clare College Cambridge, so I can continue to do my part in keeping the academic world an environment where great ideas and decency prevail. I also intend to direct funds to the Long Island Land Trust and other local charities I have long supported," James Watson said about the auction.
James Watson was a fan of birdwatching as a child, and this interest developed into a lifelong study of genetics. He earned his Ph.D. in zoology at Indiana University. In May 1951, the biologist first saw X-ray diffraction images of DNA, which inspired him to direct his research toward the study of proteins and nucleic acids.
The researcher moved to the Cavendish Physics Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, where he met Francis Crick, with whom he would go down in history. At the time, few people believed DNA played a significant role in biology, and the pair bonded over a common interest in the genetic structures.
"They thought it should be possible to correctly guess its structure, given both the experimental evidence at King's College plus careful examination of the possible stereochemical configurations of polynucleotide chains," the Noble Prize Committee reported.
Discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA was announced in an article, just 800 words long, published in the journal Nature in April 1953.
Watson wrote The Double Helix in 1968, detailing the inside story of his famous discovery. The autobiographical work became one of the best-selling science books of all time. This commercial success came three years after publication of Molecular Biology of the Gene, a work that proved highly-influential among professional biologists.
"The beauty of the double helix was manifold, implying methods of replication that underpin the inheritance of biological traits and form the basis of the entire field of molecular biology. It was, in short, the most important scientific event of the 20th century, one that would forever link the names Watson and Crick in history," Christie's Auction House reported on their Web site.
