James Watson sells DNA discovery Nobel prize for $4.1 million

James Watson, the co-discoverer of the DNA double helix structure, has auctioned off his gold Nobel Prize awarded for the discovery for over £3 million.

The 1962 Nobel Prize sold for US $4,757,000 including commission, setting a new world record price for the Prize. The Prize was the first to be sold by a living recipient. Christie's of Manhattan, the auction house that managed the sale, did not disclose the buyer.

Watson, along with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, received the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1962 for their contribution to the field of genetics. They discovered the double-helix structure and function of DNA in 1953.

The medal beat the projected sale price and also exceeded the US $2.27m (£1.45m) sale of Crick's Nobel Prize for the same discovery, paid by Jack Wang, head of Biomobie, a regenerative medicine technology developer (reported in BioNews 700).

Watson also sold the handwritten notes for his Nobel Prize acceptance speech delivered in Stockholm for $365,000. The manuscript and corrected drafts for the Nobel Lecture were sold for $245,000.

Francis Wahlgren, international director of books and manuscripts at Christie's, commented that the price and record 'demonstrate the growing strength in the market for the iconic pieces related to the early understanding and development of the implications of DNA and its growing relevance today'.

A letter by Crick to his son sold for $5.3m (£3.8m) in 2013, at more than three times the estimate, setting the world record for any letter sold at auction. The letter, which was written shortly before the discovery was published, outlined the structure of DNA.

Watson has said that he plans to donate part of the proceeds to charity and to support scientific research. In an interview with the Financial Times in November, he remarked that he hoped that the sale of the Prize would allow him to 're-enter public life'. He retired as Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's (CSHL) chancellor in 2007 after the Sunday Times published comments in which he implied that intelligence was connected to race.

Watson has suggested that he will donate part of the proceeds to institutions that he has attended. He studied for an undergraduate degree as a 15-year-old at the University of Chicago, followed by Indiana University, where he received his PhD. He worked with Crick at the University of Cambridge, before moving on to CSHL in Long Island, New York.