James Watson: You Have To Be Obsessive

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Writing The Double Helix. I think the book will last. No one else could have written it. Well, Francis could have written the story, but he has a different personality. He's interested in the result; I'm more interested in how the result came about.

ANYTHING ELSE YOU'RE PROUD OF?

I'm very proud of being the first director of the human genome project. It's just bound to give explanations for all sorts of phenomena. As a child, I always wanted explanations. Why does something happen--not what happens, but why? I really never would have guessed when we started how quickly it would go and how profound some of the implications would be. It's almost a cliche to say it, but it's true nevertheless that understanding the genome will completely change medicine.

ARE THERE ANY GREAT FRONTIERS LEFT IN BIOLOGY?

Absolutely. We've hardly skimmed off all the good stuff, so I don't feel a bit sorry for kids who are being born today. The way to do great science is to stay away from subjects that are overpopulated, and go to the frontiers. We have more frontiers now than when I was getting started. How the mind works, for example, is still a mystery. We understand the hardware, but we don't have a clue about the operating system. There are enough questions to keep people occupied for the next hundred years.