Who supervised James Watson's PhD research at Indiana University?

Salvador Luria supervised James Watson's PhD research at Indiana University.

Watson entered Indiana University in 1947 as a graduate student and completed his doctorate there in 1950. His research focused on bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—and his dissertation examined the biological effects of X-ray-inactivated bacteriophage. Luria, an influential microbiologist who later shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, was his doctoral adviser.

Watson had initially been attracted to Indiana partly because Hermann J. Muller, the 1946 Nobel laureate, worked there. Muller was an important influence on Watson's interest in genetics, but he did not supervise Watson's PhD. That distinction explains why Muller, rather than Luria, can sometimes be mistakenly selected.

Watson's Indiana training preceded his move into the structural problem that made him famous. After postdoctoral work in Europe, he joined the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, where he met Francis Crick. Their collaboration culminated in the 1953 DNA double-helix model, for which Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.