Nobel Winner Watson Cancels Tour over Race Comments

James Watson, winner of the Nobel Prize as co-discoverer of DNA's molecular structure, canceled a book tour after being suspended from his research position in New York for questioning the intelligence of Africans.

Watson, 79, left England this morning as the uproar over his comments, reported in the Sunday Times, led to his suspension as chancellor of New York's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, said Kate Farquhar-Thomson, a spokeswoman for Oxford University Press.

The Sunday Times reported this week that Watson said he was ``inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa'' because ``all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really.'' Watson apologized yesterday in a speech to a private audience at the Royal Society in London, Farquhar-Thomson said.