James D. Watson - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

James Watson was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 6, 1928, as the only son of Jean Mitchell and James D. Watson, a tax collector of Scottish descent. 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. Raised Catholic, he later described himself as "an escapee from the Catholic religion." Watson said, "The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn't believe in God." His sister was Elizabeth Jean Watson.

Watson attended public school and graduated ahead of his peers. He was fascinated with bird watching, a hobby shared with his father, so he considered majoring in ornithology Watson appeared on Quiz Kids, a popular radio show that challenged bright 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. Watson earned his B.S. degree 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 later experiences. In 1947 Watson left Hyde Park to become a graduate student at Indiana University, attracted by the presence at Bloomington of the 1946 Nobel Prize winner Hermann Joseph Muller who in crucial papers published in 1922, 1929, and in the 1930s had laid out all the basic properties of the heredity molecule that Schrödinger presented in his 1944 book. He received his PhD degree from Indiana University in 1950.