"We have discovered the secret of life," said American scientist James Watson in 1962, along with Maurice Wilkins and Francis Crick, as the trio shared the Physiology and Medicine Nobel Prize for the DNA's double helix structure discovery. 

Famous geneticist Watson, who died at 97 as confirmed by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the US -- where he worked and researched for decades -- was associated with one of the greatest breakthroughs of the 20th century.