Interviewee: James Watson. James Watson talks about his partnership with Francis Crick. (DNAi Location: Code > Finding the Structure > Players > James Watson and Francis Crick > The Watson and Crick pairing)

Well I guess my chief advantage came from, well my you know, coming from the field of genetics where the big question is what is the gene. And I'd sort of boxed myself in and that was the only problem worth solving. Whereas Rosalind was trained as a physical chemist, Maurice as a, as a physicist, they didn't see themselves, you know, as having only one objective. So my advantage, one was it was the only thing I wanted to do, and second, the other advantage was I had a collaborator who was Francis, so one can't underestimate the importance. If I had come to Cambridge and Francis wasn't there, I wouldn't have found the structure of DNA, you know, I wouldn't have, you know, had someone to talk about the meaning of the X-ray diffraction. And Perutz and Kendrew were interested in proteins, so Francis saw DNA as tremendously, you know, or I should say Francis saw DNA as potentially, you know, the most exciting molecule around.

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