I know when most people hear the name James Watson, they draw a complete blank and ask who?, but to a geeky biochem grad student, this guy's a superstar. Together with the help of Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin (who under dubious circumstances was initially denied credit for the discovery), James Watson helped elucidate the structure of DNA back in the 1950's. In 1962, Watson, Crick and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel prize for their work. Unfortunately, Franklin passed away in 1958 and the rules of the Nobel prize stipulate that it cannot be awarded post-humously.
Today the 79-year-old Watson is speaking at UT, and I'll be attending. I then have to shoot off to a doctor's appointment, which will hopefully be over in time for me to go to a grad student dinner with him as the guest of honor. I'm looking forward to his talk. He's been a very contraversial and outspoken character, garnering attention for not only the omission of Ms. Franklin from his work but also for his more recent advocacy of using prenatal genetic testing to screen fetuses for signs of disease or future disorders and the potential abortion of affected fetuses. Basically I've heard that the guy can be a real jackass, but I'm hoping to have the opportunity to judge for myself.
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