ANN ARBOR—James D. Watson’s co-discovery of the double helix structure of DNA in the 1950s has made him one of a handful of scientists who have become household names.

Less well known about Watson is that he spent a formative summer as a young biology student in 1946 at the University of Michigan’s Biological Station on Douglas Lake, in the northern tip of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. After more than 50 years away, Watson is returning to the Biological Station to deliver a lecture, “From the Double Helix to the Human Genome Project,” at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 5.

In 1953, Watson was working at Cambridge University in England when he and colleague Francis Crick described the structure of the DNA molecule in the scientific journal Nature. In recognition of the importance of their DNA work and its role in elucidating the genetic code, Watson, Crick and collaborator Maurice Wilkins received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Watson’s personal account of their discovery, “The Double Helix,” published in 1968, remains one of the most highly regarded and readable books about science ever written.

Since 1994, Watson has served as president of the world-renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, New York, where he was director from 1968 to 1994. He also served as director of National Center for Human Genome Research at the NIH at the National Institutes of Health from 1989 to 1992.

The University of Michigan Biological Station, where Watson studied while an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, is dedicated to education and research in environmental biology. Since the Biological Station’s founding in 1909, it has attracted students and scientists from around the world.

Watson will speak at 7:30 pm Aug. 5 in the Biological Station’s lecture hall. The lecture, which culminates a series of public lectures by distinguished scientists over the summer, is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact U-M Biological Station administrative manager Karie Slavik at (231) 539-8408 or umbs@umich.edu.

More information on the U-M Biological Station