New York ? With the resignation of Nobel Prize winner James Watson only hours old, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory president Bruce Stillman said Thursday that the famed scientist’s recent comments questioning the intelligence of Africans had appeared to be “the last straw.”

While Watson has triggered past furors with his comments on women, ethnic groups and even overweight people, Stillman said the famed co-discoverer of DNA’s structure had gone beyond the pale with his latest remarks.

The lab suspended Watson last week after he questioned the intelligence of Africans in a published interview. Watson, who had reigned supreme at Cold Spring Harbor for almost four decades, announced his retirement in an e-mail sent Thursday morning to reporters.

“Closer now to 80 than 79, the passing on of my remaining vestiges of leadership is more than overdue,” wrote Watson, whose latest role at the lab was as chancellor. “The circumstances in which this transfer is occurring, however, are not those which I could ever have anticipated or desired.”

The decision to leave was Watson’s, said Stillman.