Watson Plans to Stay at Harvard Despite Post at N.Y: Cancer Lab

James D. Watson, professor of Biology and co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, said recently that his position as director of a Long Island research center will not mean the end of his association with Harvard.

Dean Ford added yesterday that the directorship "had been worked out months in advance." he said that it in no way indicates Watson will depart from Harvard or any strain in his relationship with the University administration.

Watson became director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory of Quantitative Biology in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island on February 1.

Despite the assurances given by Watson and Ford, a source quoted yesterday in the New York Times that he "would not be surprised if Dr. Watson's new position was a prelude to his complete withdrawal from Harvard to become full-time director of the Long Island Laboratory."

The Times indicated that Watson's "relations with the Harvard administration are known to have been cool for some time." This fall the Harvard

University Press refused to publish The Double Helix, Watson's highly personal account of the discovery of DNA.

Cold Spring Laboratory was the site of the most dramatic discoveries about DNA in the forties and fifties. In recent years it has deteriorated from a lack of personnel, inadequate facilities, and internal dissension.

Watson hopes to make the Laboratory into a center for basic cancer research. He said he sees at Cold Spring the challenge that he no longer finds at Harvard.

"It's something new," he said. "Besides, my colleagues at Harvard are much brighter than I am.