Time Magazine named Dr. Watson one of the 20 Most Influential Americans of All Time. The diverse list includes the likes of George Washington, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, and fellow scientist Albert Einstein.
Watson is best known for his role in the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, but he has also contributed greatly to the sequencing of the human genome (as the first head of the U.S. Human Genome Project) and to cancer research (as Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory).