JAMES WATSON'S 1962 GOLD NOBEL PRIZE MEDAL

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V17 2014 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 17, Number 49, November 30, 2014, Article 23

Should we prepare for a flood of Nobel Prize medals on the market? We had a lot of discussion after the 2013 sale of Francis Crick's Nobel for over $2 million. Scott Miller forwarded this information about Christie’s upcoming sale of James Watson’s Nobel prize medal. Thanks! -Editor

[WATSON, James Dewey]. Nobel Prize Medal in Medicine or Physiology for his work on the discovery of DNA’s structure. 23 carat gold, 66 mm diameter (approx. 2 5/8 in.). Profile bust of Alfred Nobel facing left on obverse, with “ALFR. NOBEL” at left and his dates in Roman numerals at right, signed along lower left edge (incuse) “E. LINDBERG 1902”, reverse with allegorical vignette showing the figure of Science unveiling Nature, signed at right “E. LINDBERG”, legend “INVENTAS VITAM IUVAT EX COLUISSE PER ARTES” around edge, “J. D. WATSON / MCMLXII” engraved below on plaque, with caption “REG UNIVERSITAS – MED CHIR CAROL” on either side of the plaque; rim marked “GULD 1950” (Kungliga Mynt och Justeringsverket [Swedish Royal Mint]); housed in original red morocco gilt case, interior lined in tan suede and satin.

Prior to 1980 the Nobel Prize medal was made from 23 carat gold, but since then Nobel Prize medals are made of 18 carat green gold plated with 24 carat gold. The diameter of the Nobel Prize medal is 66 mm but the weight and thickness varies with the price of gold. The average Nobel Prize medal is 175 g with a thickness ranging from 2.4-5.2 mm. Both sides of most of the categories of Nobel medals are the same, showing the image of Alfred Nobel and the years of his birth and death. However, the verso of the Physiology or Medicine medal is different (as here), depicting the goddess of medicine quenching the thirst of a sick girl. The medals for Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine and Literature were modeled by the Swedish sculptor and engraver Erik Lindberg (1873-1966).

In 1962, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Francis Harry Compton Crick, James Dewey Watson and Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins “for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.” Maurice Wilkins’s colleague Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958), whose data and research using X-ray diffraction images of DNA were essential to Crick and Watson’s determining its structure and formulating their double-helical model, died of cancer at the age of 37, and was therefore not so honored because the Nobel Prize cannot be shared by more than three scientists, nor can it be awarded posthumously.

The discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA and its replication scheme was a seminal moment in biological science. Watson, Crick and Wilkins were awarded their Nobels at the same ceremony in 1962 for the same discovery. Are their Nobel medals worth the same? If Watson's sells for a penny more or penny less than Crick's, would that say anything about their relative stature on the world stage? Or just evidence of the random and skewed nature of a thin marketplace? Some readers thought the $2 million price for Crick's Nobel was a fluke, and that prices would revert toward the previous mean (citing a 2012 sale for approximately $30,000 Euros). Time will tell. Christie's will hold the sale of Dr. James D. Watson's Nobel medal and related papers on December 4 2014 at New York's Rockefeller Plaza. The medal is estimated at $2,500,000 – $3,500,000. -Editor

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