
Thrust into the limelight for discovering the secret of life at age 25 with Francis Crick, influential Nobel Prize-winning scientist James Watson has thrived on making headlines ever since. His discovery of DNA’s structure, the double helix, revolutionized human understanding of how life works. He was a relentless and sometimes ruthless visionary who led the Human Genome project and turned Harvard University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory into powerhouses of molecular biology. With unprecedented access to Watson, his wife Elizabeth and sons Rufus and Duncan over the course of a year, American Masters explores Watson’s evolution from socially awkward postdoc to notorious scientific genius to discredited nonagenarian, also interviewing his friends, his colleagues, scientists and historians.

Birth of the Living Dead
2013

The Assassination of Jesse James: Death of an Outlaw
2008

The Class of ‘92
2013

Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me
2023

Directed by John Ford
1971

Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
2017

Champs
2015

Capital in the Twenty-First Century
2019

A Plastic Ocean
2016

Hawking
2013