James Watson: Francis Crick and I made the discovery of the century, that was pretty clear. We made it, and I guess time has justified people paying all this respect to me in spite of my bad manners. We knew it when we saw it, because you can see human history and human awareness of the world around us. Suddenly to see the molecule which is responsible for heredity, and which makes possible human existence, was a very big step in man’s understanding of himself in the same sense that Darwin knew that the human species wasn’t fixed, that we were changing. It was bound to affect your attitude to everything. The realization that the essence of human beings is carried in a molecule, to really see how it was, to have that first look was, of course, a particularly pleasing thing. I guess now you think about it a little more. I didn’t think about it much. It was as if I’d suddenly become very rich. Lots of doors would be open to you, but with it came the responsibility of both living up to the fact that we were going to be famous, and some sense of responsibility. Francis and I had quite different reactions. We both knew what we’d done, and Francis thought we should talk about it as much as possible, because it was so important. And I thought, God, I had such bad manners to have had this good luck and then lord it over everyone that we had done something important! I think we both misunderstood each other’s motivations at the time. Now I understand his, and probably his were the more correct.