Jim Watson has made singular contributions to the Human Genome Project. As the program’s first NIH Director, Jim lent it credibility, won over critics, and, most importantly, persuaded outstanding young people to gamble their careers on genomics, and then listened to how they felt the project should be done. With typical intuitive brilliance, Jim pushed the genome program on the ethical, legal, and social issues, attacking head-on one of its most potentially divisive issues. Moreover, with great success, Jim almost single-handedly directed a program, during its initial years, which will fundamentally change science and medicine as we move into the twenty-first century. Launching the Genome Project may be one of Jim’s most enduring contributions. a, The major challenge in contemporary biology and medicine lies in deciphering and manipulating biologcal information. Biological information falls into three distinct categories. The biological information of our chromosomes is displayed in linear arrays comprised of a four-letter DNA alphabet. Embedded in these digital or one-dimensional chromosomal strings is the information for perhaps the most fascinating of all biological processes-developnient. In humans, most of the 100,000 or so genes are expressed as proteins, linear strings composed of a 20-letter alphabet which fold to generate the