Category: obituary

Bob Trivers died

March 15, 2026 • 7:42 am

. . . at least according to this post from Quillette and response from Steve Stewart-Williams. And, as I wrote this short post, his Wikipedia bio was updated to show that he died on March 12 at 83.

I knew the guy, though not well, and he was a complex individual, capable of making great advances in evolutionary theory (early in his career) but also to self-sabotage.  I have stories about him, but I can’t really recount them here.  I’ll just put up the first two paragraphs of his Wikipedia bio in lieu of an obituary. Unfortunately, it shows he was in the Epstein files (but so was I):

Robert Ludlow “Bob” Trivers  born February 19, 1943) is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist. Trivers proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment (1972), facultative sex ratio determination (1973), and parent–offspring conflict (1974). He has also contributed by explaining self-deception as an adaptive evolutionary strategy (first described in 1976) and discussing intragenomic conflict.

Some of Trivers’ work was funded by Jeffrey Epstein, and Trivers later defended the convicted criminal’s reputation.[3] In 2015 he was suspended from Rutgers University after he refused to teach an assigned course.

A short obituary of J. D. Watson in PNAS

February 18, 2026 • 9:45 am

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finally published an obituary of J. D. Watson, who died in November of last year. (Nathanial Comfort has written a biography of Watson that will be a good complement to Matthew’s biography of Crick; Comfort’s book will be out at the end of this year or the beginning of 2027.)  You can access the PNAS obituary for free by clicking on the screenshot below, which is a good summary of Watson’s accomplishments (and missteps) if you don’t want a book-length treatment.

Most laypeople, if they know Watson’s name, probably know just two things. First, he and Crick co-discovered the structure of DNA, one of the great findings of biology. Second, Watson was demonized, and fired as director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, for making racist comments.  Both are true. Yes, Watson was a racist, as I discovered from talking to him for an hour and a half (see below), but he was also a brilliant scientist who did far more than just the DNA-structure stuff. The article describes some of his other accomplishments and I quote:

DNA was not the only structure that Watson solved at Cambridge. Using X-ray crystallography, Watson determined that the coat protein subunits of Tobacco Mosaic virus (TMV) were arranged helically around the viral RNA, although he could not detect the RNA (5). Two years later, Rosalind Franklin, now at Birkbeck College with J. D. Bernal, published the definitive study on the structure of TMV (6).

Watson left Cambridge in 1953 to take up a fellowship with Delbrück at the California Institute of Technology. He joined forces with Alex Rich in Pauling’s laboratory to work on the structure of RNA, but RNA gave fuzzy X-ray diffraction patterns and provided no clues as to what an RNA molecule might look like. Watson was not happy in Pasadena and, with the help of Paul Doty, was appointed an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Harvard. However, he first spent a year in Cambridge, United Kingdom, before moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Watson and Crick teamed up again to study the structure of small viruses and proposed that as a general principle, the outer protein coat of these viruses was built up of identical subunits. Franklin was also studying small viruses, and she and Watson exchanged letters, and she asked Watson and Crick to review drafts of her manuscripts.

At Harvard, Watson, his colleagues, and students made many important findings on ribosomes and protein synthesis, including demonstrating, concurrently with the team of Sydney Brenner, Francois Jacob, and Matt Meselson, the existence of messenger RNA. Watson’s contributions are not reflected in many of the publications from his Harvard laboratory. He did not add his name to papers unless he had made substantial contributions to them, thus ensuring that the credit went to those who had done the work. These papers included the discovery of the bacterial transcription protein, sigma factor, by Watson’s then graduate student Richard Burgess, along with Harvard Junior Fellow Richard Losick. At Harvard, Watson also promoted the careers of women, notably providing support for Nancy Hopkins, Joan Steitz, and Susan Gerbi. He also contributed to the split in the Department of Zoology due to his contempt for those working in the Department who were antireductionists.

 

In his last scientific paper (7), published in 1972, Watson returned to DNA. In considering the replication of linear DNA of T7 phage, he pointed out that the very ends of a linear DNA molecule cannot be replicated, the “end replication problem” which is solved in eukaryotes by telomeres. (Watson’s work was predated by Alexey Olovnikov who had published the same observation in 1971 in a Russian journal.)

Note the contributions Watson made, along with collaborators, at Harvard, and note as well that he did not put his name on publications unless he made “substantial contributions to them.”  I did that, too, and I inherited that practice from my Ph.D. advisor Dick Lewontin, who inherited it from his Ph.D. advisor Theodosius Dobzhansky, who inherited it from his research supervisor at Columbia and Cal Tech, the Nobel Laureate T. H. Morgan.  This is a good practice, and I never suffered from keeping my name off papers, for the granting agencies care only about which and how many papers come from an investigator’s funded lab, not how many his or her name is on.  I’ll digress here to say that this practice has almost died out, as people now slap their name on paper for paltry reasons, like they contributed organisms or other material.  The reason is the fierce competition for funding and credit.

Watson went on to write influential textbooks, trade books (notably The Double Helix) and headed up the Human Genome Project, from which he ultimately resigned. Finally, he ran the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which he did very well until the racism scandal broke, rendering him ineffective.

Witkowski and Stillman don’t neglect the dark side of Watson:

In the late 1990s, Watson gave seminars, notably at the University of California Berkeley, where he expanded on research on the hormone POMC and related peptides and made inappropriate and incorrect observations about women. In October 2007, he made racist remarks about the intelligence of people of African descent, and, damagingly for his fellow employees at CSHL, stated that while he hoped that everyone was equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true.” The CSHL Board of Trustees dissociated the institute from Watson’s comments, and he was forced to step down from his administrative position as Chancellor. The matter resurfaced in January 2019 when Watson was asked if his views on race and intelligence had changed. His answer was unequivocal: “No, not at all.” The Laboratory’s response was immediate, relieving him of all his emeritus titles. Watson and his family, however, continued to live on the CSHL campus.

They conclude this way:

Jim’s remarkable contributions to science and society will long endure—for the scientists using the human genome sequence, for students using Molecular Biology of the Gene and for readers of The Double Helix, and for reviving Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. He was a most amazing man.

Here’s a photo of Watson and me when he visited Chicago in 2013 to introduce the Watson Lectures that he endowed for our department. Do read the cool story about how those lectures came about in my post “Encounters with J. D. Watson“.

Encounters with J. D. Watson

November 8, 2025 • 10:30 am

Yesterday I wrote a brief report on the death of J. D. Watson, who left this earthly vale at age 97.  You can read the NYT obituary for him, which is quite good (archived here), so I’ll just describe my two encounters with the man, one of which was quite funny. The encounters are in fact loosely related.

Watson got his B.S. at the University of Chicago in 1947, and since he was born here (and presumably had relatives here), he would come back to the University on some Alumni Days.  On those days the science labs throughout the University would set up demonstrations of what they were doing. Building doors were unlocked to allow alumni to wander in at will and get educated about science.

One of the demonstrations was on the first floor of my building: the Zoology Building, which was a going group of labs and lecture halls even in Watson’s Day.  A postdoc in Marty Kreitman’s lab named John McDonald, now a professor at the University of Delaware, was demonstrating how DNA was sequenced. John had set up a PCR machine and was also running amplified DNA on a gel to show how it was sequenced.

It was the weekend, and I was down in the first-floor lab shooting the breeze with John, who was doing his demonstration although nobody else was there. All of a sudden J. D. Watson strolled into the lab! I was flabbergasted! I knew of course what he looked like, but apparently John did not.  Watson asked John what he was doing, and John proceeded to explain to Mr. DNA what DNA was and how it was sequenced. I remember John taking a very elementary approach, telling Watson, “I’m sequencing DNA. Do you know what DNA is?”  Watson stood there, saying nothing but listening intently. John proceeded to tell Watson what DNA was, using a simile like, “Well, imagine a string with four colored beads on it. Each of those beads is a nucleotide base, and pairs specifically with a bead of another color. .  ” And so on and so on. . .  I was flabbergasted.

At this point my jaw was on the floor as McDonald, completely unaware of whom he was explaining stuff to, went through the whole megillah of DNA pairing, PCR amplification, sequencing, and so on. Watson stood there paying rapt attention the whole time.

After John’s explanation. Watson thanked him and wandered out of the building. As soon as he’d gone, I said to John, very loudly, “DO YOU KNOW WHO THAT WAS?”  John said “no”. So I told him he’d just explained DNA at great length to the man who helped determine its structure.  McDonald, of Irish descent, freckled and with copper hair, was so embarrassed that he turned about as red as a human being could get.  And there were only two witnesses to this funny tale.

Watson was very polite, and in the end John ‘s explanation had a great outcome. It turned out that Watson was so impressed that a postdoc was willing to explain DNA sequencing in such detail, and to a total stranger, that Watson donated a large sum of money to our department, intended to create a series of lectures—”The Jean Watson Lectures,” in honor of JDW’s beloved mom—that were to deal with evolution and DNA.  This series went on for many years, but now it’s gone,.

This brings us to my second encounter with Watson.  He was here for one of the annual lectures, for he introduced the lecture’s own introducer, saying a bit about his mother and his undergraduate years at Chicago.  The department members were given a chance to have individual appointments with Watson, and I grabbed one. (Because the accusations of racism against Watson had already begun then, not a lot of people wanted to talk to him. He was also known to be daunting.)  So I got a 45-minute appointment with Watson, and, in fact, it was doubled, because the person after me didn’t show up. So I had an hour and a half to occupy JDW, which I considered a great chance to chat despite his demonization for racism (yes, the conversation showed that he was a bit of a bigot). That’s where this photo came from (it was on May 29, 2012):

I don’t remember everything we talked about, though I do remember that Watson spent a lot of time complaining about how his characterization as a racist was unfair. (See the section called “Public remarks on genetics, intelligence, and race” in his Wikipedia bio for the accusations.) His bigoted words ultimately led to his suspension as head of the Cold Spring Harbor Labs, and, after an illustrious career, would have affected him greatly. Truth be told, I did see signs of bigotry in Watson during the conversation, but for the life of me I can’t remember what he said about that.

I do remember asking him—because I knew he was an atheist—if atheism or naturalism played any role in the discovery of the DNA structure. Watson said “yes”, explaining that he and especially Crick were motivated in part to find that structure because they wanted to demonstrate that the “secret of life” (i.e., the molecule that was a recipe for human beings) was a purely naturalistic phenomenon.

Yes, Watson was a difficult man, and one not free from bigotry, but we should also remember his positive accomplishments, which included not only the co-discovery of DNA’s structure; the writing of the standard book in the field The Molecular Biology of the Gene (an enormously influential book, followed by two other texts); the writing of The Double Helix, the only genetics book I know of that was a best seller (yes, it unfairly portrayed Rosalind Franklin, but Watson later apologized, and Matthew Cobb gives the best evaluation of that controversy here); setting up the Human Genome Project (this is often forgotten, but Watson resigned as head because of differences with Bernadine Healey, head of the NIH, who wanted to patent the DNA sequences, and Watson would have no part of that); and expanding and focusing the mission of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.  He is one of many biologists who had sides of their nature that were unpleasant, but also made great scientific contributions.

So those are my Watson stories (I’ve told the one about Alumni Day before), and will serve as my memorial to the man.

Oh, I forgot one thing.  A few years earlier I was browsing in a bookstore in Boulder, Colorado, and found a first printing of The Double Helix for only five bucks. It was in great condition and I snapped it up. I didn’t think I’d ever meet Watson, but when I did I took the book along, hoping he’d autograph it. He did, and also signed several other books for me, including the one below, an annotated version of the real thing.

J. D. Watson dead at 97

November 7, 2025 • 1:53 pm

Some last-minute news from Greg: J. D. Watson has crossed the rainbow bridge to join Francis Crick.  He had long innings, though.  Click on NYT screenshot below, or find the article archived here for free.

I hardly need to say much about Watson, as I think most readers know about his achievements, his book The Double Helix, and his late-in-life cancellation for racism. I’ll have a few words to say about him tomorrow, along with a cute story recounting what happened when he visited our department on Alumni Day. Here’s a photo of me chatting with him in our seminar room twelve years ago:

Robert Redford died

September 16, 2025 • 8:10 am

Robert Redford is one of those people who seem immortal, or at least had the charisma to startle you when he dies. And he just did die. He wasn’t young—89 years old. Still, I considered him the handsomest movie star ever, and I’ve said that if I could switch place with any man, it would be Redford (Paul Newman would be a close second). Here’s the announcement from the Washington Post (click to read h/t Matthew):

An excerpt:

Robert Redford, an actor whose beach-god looks and subtle magnetism in films such as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men” made him one of the biggest movie stars of all time, but who forged an even more profound legacy in cinema as a patron saint of American independent film, died Sept. 16 at his home near Provo, Utah. He was 89.

His death was announced in a statement by publicist Cindi Berger, who did not cite a cause.

Since 1981, Mr. Redford had been president and founder of the Sundance Institute in Park City, Utah. He said his arts colony was not about “insurgents coming down from the mountain to attack the mainstream” but about broadening the very concept of mainstream. Sundance provided a vital platform for two generations of outside-the-system filmmakers — from Quentin Tarantino to Ava DuVernay — who were embraced by ticketbuyers and studios and helped enlarge the definition of commercial fare in a risk-averse industry.

My two favorite movies of his are Out of Africa, starring Meryl Streep as Karen Blixen, and The Way We Were, costarring Barbra Streisand (both women are my eternal heartthrobs).  Here are two scenes from the first movie and one from the second.  movie. In the first bit, Redford, who plays Denys Finch Hatton, a big-game guide and Blixen’s lover, encounters Blixen’s husband.

Below is the final scene from the movie, in which Blixen leaves Africa. It features Finch-Hatton’s funeral after he died in a plane crash, as well as Blixen’s farewell to her favorite helper, and, most moving, a report of lions resting on Finch-Hatton’s grave. All the words are genuine, taken from Blixen’s book Out of Africa.  The prose is stunningly beautiful, and I can’t hold back tears at the lion bit. But they truncated the words a bit. The real excerpt from the book is better, as it has a final paragraph:

After I had left Africa, Gustav Mohr wrote to me of a strange thing that had happened by Denys’ grave, the like of which I have never heard. “The Masai,” he wrote, “have reported to the District Commissioner at Ngong, that many times, at sunrise and sunset, they have seen lions on Finch-Hatton’s grave in the Hills. A lion and a lioness have come there, and stood, or lain, on the grave for a long time. Some of the Indians who have passed the place in their lorries on the way to Kajado have also seen them. After you went away, the ground round the grave was levelled out, into a sort of big terrace, I suppose that the level place makes a good site for the lions, from there they can have a view over the plain, and the cattle and game on it.”

It was fit and decorous that the lions should come to Denys’s grave and make him an African monument. “And renowned be thy grave.” Lord Nelson himself, I have reflected, in Trafalgar Square, has his lions made only out of stone.

Redford is not in this clip, but his presence is palpable:

. . . and the heartbreaking farewell scene from “The Way We Were,” after the pair, having broken up years ago, meet by accident and have a bittersweet final farewell:

Andrzej’s Facebook posts about Malgorzata

June 18, 2025 • 9:30 am

I noticed on Facebook that Andrzej had made several posts about Malgorzata and his last memories of her from yesterday. Since they’re accessible to the public on FB, I’ll reproduce them here. The originals are in Polish but I’ll give the Google translations.  The first one shows the Polish original with a nice picture of Malgorzata:

English translation by Google, which of course isn’t perfect. If you read Polish, feel free to put better translations below:

Małgorzata died today, she died at the desk, a moment earlier we were joking, we were planning texts for tomorrow. There will be no funeral, Małgorzata decided, that her body should be used for science. Trying to get my thoughts together. Our relationship was only three months old, when the Arab armies gathered at the Egyptian borders. We were sure that the days of the people of Israel were numbered. Malgorzata was devastated, I tried to comfort her, I invented absurd scenarios, but of course I did not anticipate what happened on June 5, 1967. All those years between those days, and today the bow spins. We talked today about how amazing is the Israeli operation in Iran. I said it’s far away. She replied, let me enjoy what I have.

We weren’t just married, we were a couple of deafeningly close friends who liked to do everything together, understanding each other without words.

What’s next ? I don’t know. Małgorzata was explaining Brendan O’Neill’s text about western hemispheres in Egypt today. She said it have to go tomorrow It’s going to go. If there are mistakes, report them, I don’t really know what I’m doing.

Posts made this morning. “Letters” refers to their joint website Listy, where this one is also posted.  The daily Hili dialogues, in Polish, were on Listy, and I simply swiped them from there although Malgorzata sent me an English translation each morning:

Another; “Day six” refers to Israel’s war with Iran:

Finally, a public FB post by one of their friends:

Malgorzata died

June 17, 2025 • 11:59 am

Andrzej informed me this morning that Malgorzata died suddenly, almost instantly dropping out of life as she sat at her computer.  I had talked to her just this morning, and Andrzej said that the day had passed normally.  Then her head drooped at her desk, and she was gone.

Now she is dead, and all of us who loved her are bereft, but most especially Andrzej, who was both her life partner—they’d been married for sixty years—and her work partner. They were almost never apart: it was one of the best marriages I ever saw: a partnership of both the heart and the brain (Listy was a true collaboration).

I do not want to write more about this today, for it hurts, and I can’t wrap my head around it. I regarded her and Andrzej as my surrogate parents, and I can’t believe I’ll never speak to her again.

RIP Malgorzata; I loved you both as a surrogate mother and a good friend.

A few photos:

In the morning with Hili: