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... But when Watson died this week at the age of 97, his renown as the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA was tarnished by the fact that he had become a persona non grata in the two research fields that he pioneered: molecular biology and genomics.

Watson's penchant for making prejudiced and scientifically unfounded remarks about Black people, women, and others eventually forced even the institution that he had long directed, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, to cut all ties with him in 2019.

This fall from grace was remarkable given the heights he had achieved. In 1953, when he was not yet 25 years old, Watson worked with English researcher Francis Crick to piece together clues from various experiments " including work done by X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin " in order to create the first accurate model of DNA's chemical structure.

"This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest," Watson and Crick wrote in the published report describing their model, in what has to be science's most famous understatement. ...