DNA scientist's Nobel medal sells for $2.27m

The 1962 Nobel Prize medal awarded to DNA discoverer Francis Crick sold Thursday in New York for $2.27 million, a day after a letter Crick wrote went for a record $6 million. The Physiology or Medicine prize medal sold at Heritage Auctions in Manhattan to Jack Wang, CEO of Chinese biomedical company Biomobie, the auction house said. Britain's Crick received the prize along with his DNA co-discoverer James Dewey Watson, and Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins. Sandra Palomino, director of historic manuscripts at Heritage Auctions, said the sale "showed the continuing importance of Crick's, Watson's and Franklin's discovery 60 years after they made it." The medal has been kept in a safe deposit box in California since the death of Crick's widow and was put up for auction by his heirs. Part of the proceeds are being given to a new Francis Crick Institute in London. On Wednesday, a letter written by Crick to his 12-year-old son telling him about having discovered the structure of DNA sold at Christie's for just over $6 million. This was a world record for the auction of a letter. Without Christie's added premium, the sale price was $5.3 million, well beyond the initial $1-2 million estimate.