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James Dewey Watson was born in Chicago on 6 April, 1928, as the only son of James D. Watson, a businessman, and Jean Mitchell. His father's ancestors were originally of English descent and had lived in the midwest for several generations.
In 1947, he received a B.Sc. degree in Zoology. During these years his boyhood interest in bird-watching had matured into a serious desire to learn genetics. This became possible when he received a Fellowship for graduate study in Zoology at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he received his Ph.D. degree in Zoology in 1950.
He soon met Crick and discovered their common interest in solving the DNA structure. Their first serious effort, in the late autumn of 1951, was unsatisfactory. Their second effort based upon more experimental evidence and better appreciation of the nucleic acid literature, resulted, early in March 1953, in the proposal of the complementary double-helical configuration.