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	<author id="14313">
  <name><![CDATA[James D. Watson]]></name>
  <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14313.James_D_Watson]]></link>
  <fans-count type="integer">1</fans-count>
  <followers-count type="integer">0</followers-count>
  <image_url>http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1244964663p5/14313.jpg</image_url>
  <about><![CDATA[Watson was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 6, 1928, to the son of a businessman, also named James Dewey Watson, and Margaret Jean Mitchell. His father was of Scottish descent (both Dewey and Watson being Scottish surnames). His mother's father Lauchlin Mitchell, a tailor, was from Glasgow, Scotland, and her mother, Lizzie Gleason, was the child of Irish parents from Tipperary.Watson was fascinated with bird watching, a hobby he shared with his father.Watson appeared on Quiz Kids, a popular radio show that challenged precocious youngsters to answer questions. Thanks to the liberal policy of University president Robert Hutchins, he enrolled at the University of Chicago at the age of 15. After reading Erwin Schrödinger's book What Is Life? in 1946, Watson changed his professional ambitions from the study of ornithology to genetics. He earned his B.S. in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1947. In his autobiography, Avoid Boring People, Watson describes the University of Chicago as an idyllic academic institution where he was instilled with the capacity for critical thought and an ethical compulsion not to suffer fools who impeded his search for truth, in contrast to his description of his later work at Harvard University.

He was attracted to the work of Salvador Luria. Luria eventually shared a Nobel Prize for his work on the Luria-Delbrück experiment, which concerned the nature of genetic mutations. Luria was part of a distributed group of researchers who were making use of the viruses that infect bacteria, called bacteriophages. Luria and Max Delbrück were among the leaders of this new &quot;Phage Group&quot;, an important movement of geneticists from experimental systems such as Drosophila towards microbial genetics. Early in 1948 Watson began his Ph.D. research in Luria's laboratory at Indiana University and that spring he got to meet Delbrück in Luria's apartment and again that summer during Watson's first trip to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).The Phage Group was the intellectual medium within which Watson became a working scientist. Importantly, the members of the Phage Group had a sense that they were on the path to discovering the physical nature of the gene. In 1949 Watson took a course with Felix Haurowitz that included the conventional view of that time: that proteins were genes and able to replicate themselves. The other major molecular component of chromosomes, DNA, was thought by many to be a &quot;stupid tetranucleotide&quot;, serving only a structural role to support the proteins. However, even at this early time, Watson, under the influence of the Phage Group, was aware of the Avery-MacLeod-McCarty experiment, which suggested that DNA was the genetic molecule. Watson's research project involved using X-rays to inactivate bacterial viruses. He gained his Ph.D. in Zoology at Indiana University in 1950 (at age 22).

Watson then went to Copenhagen in September 1950 for a year of postdoctoral research, first heading to the laboratory of biochemist Herman Kalckar. Kalckar was interested in the enzymatic synthesis of nucleic acids, and wanted to use phages as an experimental system. Watson, however, wanted to explore the structure of DNA, and his interests did not coincide with Kalckar's. After working part of the year with Kalcker, Watson spent the remainder of his time in Copenhagen conducting experiments with microbial physiologist Ole Maaloe, then a member of the Phage Group. The experiments, which Watson had learned of during the previous summer's Cold Spring Harbor phage conference, included the use of radioactive phosphate as a tracer to determine which molecular components of phage particles actually infect the target bacteria during viral infection. The intention was to determine whether protein or DNA was the genetic material, but upon consultation with Max Delbrück, they determined that their results were inconclusive and could not specifically identify the newly labeled molecules as DNA. Watson n]]></about>    <gender>male</gender>  <hometown>Chicago</hometown>  <born_at>04/06/1928</born_at>    
  
  
  <books>
        <book id="126061">
  <title><![CDATA[The Double Helix]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[James D. Watson]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14313.James_D_Watson]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>3.53</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>597</ratings_count>
  <published>1968</published>  
  
</book>
        <book id="540346">
  <title><![CDATA[DNA: The Secret of Life]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[James D. Watson]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14313.James_D_Watson]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Andrew Berry]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/580606]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>3.88</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>91</ratings_count>
  <published>2003</published>  
  
</book>
        <book id="977585">
  <title><![CDATA[Avoid Boring People: And Other Lessons from a Life in Science]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[James D. Watson]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14313.James_D_Watson]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>3.14</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>43</ratings_count>
  <published>2007</published>  
  
</book>
        <book id="475949">
  <title><![CDATA[Molecular Biology of the Gene, Fifth Edition]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[James D. Watson]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14313.James_D_Watson]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>4.05</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>21</ratings_count>
  <published>1970</published>  
  
</book>
        <book id="540366">
  <title><![CDATA[Genes, Girls, and Gamow: After the Double Helix]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[James D. Watson]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14313.James_D_Watson]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>3.69</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>16</ratings_count>
  <published>2001</published>  
  
</book>
        <book id="1902818">
  <title><![CDATA[Talking in Whispers]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[James D. Watson]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14313.James_D_Watson]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>3.75</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>12</ratings_count>
  <published>1986</published>  
  
</book>
        <book id="1083435">
  <title><![CDATA[Darwin: The Indelible Stamp; The Evolution Of An Idea]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[James D. Watson]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14313.James_D_Watson]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>4.44</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>9</ratings_count>
  <published>2005</published>  
  
</book>
        <book id="706758">
  <title><![CDATA[Recombinant DNA]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[James D. Watson]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14313.James_D_Watson]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Michael Gilman]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10632]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>4.17</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>6</ratings_count>
  <published>1983</published>  
  
</book>
        <book id="1902825">
  <title><![CDATA[Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[James D. Watson]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14313.James_D_Watson]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Anne Hill]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/484149]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>5.00</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>4</ratings_count>
  <published>2003</published>  
  
</book>
        <book id="448315">
  <title><![CDATA[Point Man: Inside the Toughest and Most Deadly Unit in Vietnam by a Founding Member of the Elite Navy Seals]]></title>
  <authors>
    <author>
      <name><![CDATA[James D. Watson]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14313.James_D_Watson]]></link>
    </author>
        <author>
      <name><![CDATA[Kevin Dockery]]></name>
      <link><![CDATA[http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/585691]]></link>
    </author>
      </authors>
  <average_rating>3.50</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>4</ratings_count>
  <published>1993</published>  
  
</book>
      </books>
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