The co-discoverer of DNA, Dr James Watson, is set to sell his Nobel Prize at auction next month to raise money for Clare College, amongst other recipients.

The gold medal will be auctioned in New York next month and is expected to sell for up to $3.5 million. It is the first Nobel Prize medal to be offered for auction by a living recipient.

Last year Watson’s colleague Dr Francis Crick’s medal was auctioned by his estate and fetched $2.7 million, whilst a 1936 Nobel Peace Prize medal awarded to the foreign minister of Argentina for his role in ending the Chaco War sold for $1.1 million.

In addition to the medal, Watson’s handwritten notes for his acceptance speech are expected to be auctioned for up to $400,000, along with a manuscript and edited drafts for his Nobel speech, which have an estimated price of $200,000 to $300,000.

Watson, 86, is expected to donate a portion of the proceeds to Clare College, the University of Chicago, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and other charities.

He said in a statement that the donations to universities and scientific research institutions are intended to fund further projects, claiming that the auction would allow him to “continue to do my part in keeping the academic world an environment where great ideas and decency prevail."

The 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".

Watson and Crick worked together on the structure of DNA at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in the early 1950s and famously announced their discovery of “the secret of life” on the 28th of February 1953 at the Eagle pub.