Nobel Laureate James Watson, one of the giants in the study of DNA, is auctioning off his 1962 Nobel Prize medallion.

Watson was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine with fellow scientists Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for their remarkable discovery of the building blocks of life, the DNA's double helix.

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The gold medallion will be auctioned off at Christie's on December 4. Experts anticipate the medallion might be worth at least US$3.5 million. This is the first time a Nobel Prize medallion has been put up for auction by a living recipient.

It's baffling why someone would sell his Nobel Prize medallion. Watson, who is now 85, is said to be in dire financial straits, hence his pressing need for money.

Watson said he plans to donate part of the proceeds of the sale of his medal to research institutions and universities he used to work for. He looks forward to offering philanthropic gifts to the Clare College Cambridge, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the University of Chicago.

An enduring controversy surrounding Watson was his dismissal in 2007 by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory due to apparently racist comments he made. Watson, who worked for the lab for 40 years, was quoted saying different races aren't equal in intelligence.

He was also criticized for not mentioning Rosalind Franklin in his work on DNA. Franklin was responsible for the X-ray diffraction technique that made his discovery of DNA possible.

Without the pivotal use of Franklin's X-ray diffraction, Watson, Crick and Wilkins would never have discovered the DNA's double helix. Watson was dismissive about Franklin in his memoirs, mentioning her only to criticize her make-up and sense of style.

Watson has a history of making sexist remarks about women working in science. In 2012, he was quoted saying that having women scientists around makes it more fun for men, but men probably become less effective in their work.

Despite Watson's flaws, there is no doubting the historic significance of his team's unraveling of the DNA double helix. Mario Capecchi, a professor of genetics and human biology from the University of Utah, said everything biologists do is more or less based on the double helix structure.

This isn't the first time scientists have sold their prized possessions at an auction, however. Just last year, Crick's letter to his son about the DNA double helix discovery before the discovery was made public fetched US$6.06 million at auction. This is the most expensive letter ever sold at an auction.

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