'Father of modern genetics' earned his doctorate at IU

The year is 1950, and a young man named James Watson has just received a doctorate in genetics from IU. In a mere five years, he and colleague Francis Crick will discover the structure of DNA, for which they will share the Nobel Prize.

Late in the 1940s, Watson was one of three brilliant young scientists working in the attic of IU Bloomington's Kirkwood Hall. They had only a portable air conditioning unit to ward off the sweltering heat of southern Indiana summers. In every sense of the word, the attic was a hothouse of activity. All three would eventually win Nobel Prizes. Read the archived HP story at:
http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/HomePages/040299/text/vip.htm

In a new memoir, Genes, Girls and Gamow (Knopf) Watson, who is currently president of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, recalls life as a celebrated young scientist in the 1950s. He discusses those years in an archived audiostream at American University Radio's The Diane Rehm Show:
http://www.wamu.org/dr/shows/drarc_020304.html

Also catch a segment of PBS' Scientific American Frontiers in an archived videostream. Actor Alan Alda interviews Watson, "the father of modern genetics." Click on "A Passion for DNA" at this Web site:
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1202/video/watchonline.htm