James Watson
Francis Crick
James Watson
James Dewey Watson was born on April 6 1928 in Chicago. Watson is of English, Scottish and Irish ancestry. He is an American molecular biologist and zoologist. Watson is an atheist. In 2003, he was one of 22 Nobel Laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto. Watson married Elizabeth Lewis in 1968. They have two sons, Rufus Robert Watson (born at 1970) and Duncan James Watson (born at 1972). Watson sometimes talks about his son Rufus, who suffers from schizophrenia, seeking to encourage progress in the understanding and treatment of mental illness by determining how genetics contributes to it. He earned degrees at the University of Chicago (1947) and Indiana University (1950). Following a post-doctoral year at the University of Copenhagen with Herman Kalckar and Ole Maaløe, Watson worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in England, where he first met his future collaborator Francis Crick. Watson has received 19 honorary doctorates.
Francis Crick
Francis Harry Compton Crick was born οn 8 June 1916 at Weston Favell, England. He was a British physicist, biologist and humanist. He married two times. His first wedding was with Ruth Doreen Crick at 18 February 1940. They separated on 8 May 1947. On 25 November 1940 he got a child Michael Francis Compton. His second wedding was with Odile Crick at 14 August 1949. They separated on 28 July 2004. He got two children from this marriage Gabrielle Anne at 15 July 1951 and Jacqueline Marie-Therese at 12 March 1954 but she died at 28 February 2011. At the age of 21, Crick earned a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from University College, London. Crick began his PhD at UCL but was interrupted by World War II. He later became a PhD student and Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and mainly worked at the Cavendish Laboratory and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. He was also an Honorary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge and of University College, London. He died of colon cancer on the morning of 28 July 2004 at the University of California, San Diego. He was cremated at Thornton Hospital in La Jolla and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean.
Awards
Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins were awarded at 1962 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.
Watson awards
Crick awards
Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (1960) Member of the National Academy of Sciences (1962) Nobel Prize (1962) John J. Carty Award (1971) Foreign Member of the Royal Society (1981) EMBO Membership (1985) Copley Medal (1993) Lomonosov Gold Medal (1994)
FRS (1959) Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (1960) Gairdner Foundation International Award (1962) Nobel Prize (1962) EMBO Membership (1964) Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (1969) Royal Medal (1972) Copley Medal (1975) Sir Hans Krebs Medal (1977) Albert Medal (1987) OM (1991)
James Watson and Francis Crick with their DNA model at the Cavendish Laboratories in 1953.
Francis Crick
James Watson
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid)
DNA was first isolated by Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher in 1869. The molecule was found in the nucleus of the cells and so he called it nuclein. In 1928, Frederick Griffith discovered that traits of the "smooth" form of Pneumococcus could be transferred to the "rough" form of the same bacteria by mixing killed "smooth" bacteria with the live "rough" form. This system provided the first clear suggestion that DNA carries genetic information. The Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment identified DNA as the transforming principle in 1943. DNA's role in heredity was confirmed in 1952, when Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase in the Hershey–Chase experiment showed that DNA is the genetic material of the T2 bacteriophage. In the 1950s, Erwin Chargaff found that the amount of thymine (T) present in a molecule of DNA was about equal to the amount of adenine (A) present. He found that the same applies to guanine (G) and cytosine (C).
In 1953, James D. Watson and Francis Crick suggested what is now accepted as the first correct double-helix model of DNA structure in the journal Nature. Their double-helix, molecular model of DNA was then based on a single X-ray diffraction image "Photo 51", taken by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling in May 1952. In 1957, Crick explained the relationship between DNA, RNA and proteins, in the central dogma of molecular biology. How DNA was copied (the replication mechanism) came in 1958 through the Meselson–Stahl experiment. More work by Crick and coworkers showed that the genetic code was based on non-overlapping triplets of bases, called codons. These findings represent the birth of molecular biology.
Chemical structure of DNA. The phosphate groups are yellow, the deoxyribonucleic sugars are orange, and the nitrogen bases are green, purple, pink, and blue. The atoms shown are: P=phosphorus O=oxygen N=nitrogen H=hydrogen.
The structure of part of a DNA double helix.
Molecular model of a tRNA molecule. Crick predicted that such adaptor molecules might be links between codons and amino acids.
Frederick Griffith (1879 - 1941) was a English medical officer and geneticist. In 1928, during an experiment, he discovered what he called a transforming principle, but today we call DNA.
Johannes Friedrich Miescher (13 August 1844 – 26 August 1895) was a Swiss physician and biologist. He was the first scientist to isolate nucleic acid.
Alfred Day Hershey (December 4, 1908 – May 22, 1997) was an American Nobel Prize-winning bacteriologist and geneticist.
Martha Cowles Chase (November 30, 1927 – August 8, 2003), was an American geneticist known for having experimentally showed in 1952 (with Alfred Hershey) that DNA rather than protein is the genetic material of life.
Erwin Chargaff (11 August 1905 – 20 June 2002) was an Austro-Hungarian biochemist who immigrated to the United States during the Nazi era and was a professor of biochemistry at Columbia University medical school. Through careful experimentation, Chargaff discovered two rules that helped lead to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.
Acrostic 1 1.
__W__
1.His second surname.
2. ____A____
2.The name of his wife.
3. ___T____
3.Watson is of English, ......... and Irish ancestry
4.
4.His son Rufus suffers from .......
5. 6.
S____________ _O_______ N____
5.He is a biologist and ............. 6.What prize did Watson, Crick and Wilkins win in 1962?
Acrostic 2
1.
2. 3. 4. 5.
C________
__R__ _I_______ __C_______ K____
1. At which university did Francis and James first meet? 2. His second name. 3. What was one of his professions? 4. The name of his dead child. 5. In 1977 he won the prize Sir Hans ....... Medal
Acrostic 1 Solution: 1. Dewey 2. Elizabeth
3. Scottish 4. Schizophrenia 5. Zoologist
6. Nobel
Acrostic 2 Solution: 1. Cavendish 2. Harry 3. Biologist
4. Jacqueline 5. Krebs
Students of Greek School Maria Tsoni Marietta Melissina Hejli Hotza George Malliaros