Nobel Prize recipient is broke, selling his medal: How much will it fetch?

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James Watson, after making some inflammatory comments back in 2007, has fallen on hard times and is hoping to get a few million dollars for his Nobel medal.

by John Tyburski

Copyright © Daily Digest News, KPR Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

First published at Daily Digest News on December 1, 2014

The Nobel Prize bestows upon its recipient prestige, worldwide fame, a spiffy medal, and a million bucks. Recipient James Watson wants more, however. The aged scientist has fallen on hard times, despite having won the most prestigious distinction for any scientist back in 1962. Watson fell out of favor after making some offensive remarks in 2007. Now he is hoping to sell his Nobel medal for $3 million.

The Nobel medal itself consists of 200 grams of 23-carat gold. Melted down, it’s worth about $7,200. Watson, who with the late Francis Crick elucidated the double helix structure of DNA, is hoping to get some more mileage out of his discovery by selling off what it earned him.

Watson’s troubles came after telling the Sunday Times of London that he felt “gloomy about the prospect of Africa.” Watson explained the reason for his pessimism was that “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really.”

Since these comments were published, Watson’s speaking engagements have essentially dried up, his board positions have been terminated, and his position which he held for roughly 40 years at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was yanked through forced retirement.

Watson is now 86 years old and seems to have been caught unprepared for such calamity. Although he says he needs the money, he says he will donate some of the proceeds of the sale of his medal, provided it fetches the $3 million he hopes it will.

If Watson is successful in selling his medal, he will not be the first to do so. In fact, the medal that once belonged to the very man he shared his prize with, Francis Crick, sold last year for a little over $2 million, seven years after the death of Crick’s widow. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of Crick’s medal went into the construction of a medical institute.

Most may not realize, since it is often not mentioned, that Watson and Crick shared the Nobel prize with a third recipient by the name of Maurice Wilkins. A forth scientist, a woman by the name of Rosalind Franklin, was, according to many, both instrumental in the double helix discovery and yet ignored in the recognition of the accomplishment.

Watson once remarked when asked about his apparent oversight that had Franklin made any noteworthy contribution, she would have shared in the prize. While short on funds as of late, Watson has never been accused of being short on self-confidence.