Watson, James Dewey (1928-...), is an American biologist. He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with biologist Francis H. C. Crick and biophysicist Maurice H. F. Wilkins, both of Britain. In 1953, Watson and Crick, relying mainly on experimental data provided by Wilkins, devised a model of the molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA is the substance that makes up genes, the material in cells that determines the characteristics of an organism.