James Watson

With a net worth of $20 billion, James Watson is the world's richest scientist. Watson is a scientist, geneticist, and zoologist from the United States who is most known for his work on the double helix structure of DNA. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1947 and Indiana University in 1950 with a Ph.D.

Watson completed his postdoctoral training under Herman Kalckar and Ole Maale at the University of Copenhagen before working at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in England. Watson initially met Francis Crick, his future collaborator, at Cambridge. Watson was a member of the Harvard University Biology Department faculty from 1956 until 1976, where he promoted molecular biology research.

Watson shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins in 1962 for finding the double helix structure of DNA. This discovery is a watershed moment in molecular biology and cell communication.

From 1968 to 1968, Watson was the director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), when he turned his research focus to cancer research. He resigned as the laboratory's chancellor in 2007 after making comments that claimed there was a genetic link between IQ and race.

Watson is the author of numerous scientific works, including the classic Molecular Biology of the Gene (1965) and the best-selling The Double Helix (1968). Between 1988 to 1992, Watson worked at the National Institutes of Health, where he assisted in the formation of the Human Genome Project, which finished mapping the human genome in 2003.

Estimated Net Worth: $20 billion