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James Dewey Watson, Nobel Prize winner and “semi-professional loose cannon,” died Thursday in hospice care after a brief illness. He was 97.

Watson helped discover the double-helix shape of DNA in 1953.

On a chilly February afternoon in 1953, a gangly American and a fast-talking Brit walked into the Eagle pub in Cambridge, England, and announced to the assembled imbibers that they had discovered the “secret of life.”

Even by the grandiose standards of bar talk, it was a provocative statement. Except, it was also pretty close to the truth. That morning, James Watson, the American whiz kid who had not yet turned 25, and his British colleague, Francis Crick , had finally worked out

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