Francis Crick

Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS[3][4] (8 June

1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular Francis Crick
OM FRS
biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James
Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins
played crucial roles in deciphering the helical structure
of the DNA molecule.

Crick and Watson's paper in Nature in 1953 laid the

groundwork for understanding DNA structure and
functions.[5] Together with Maurice Wilkins, they were
jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the
molecular structure of nucleic acids and its
significance for information transfer in living
material".[2][6]
Born Francis Harry Compton Crick
Crick was an important theoretical molecular biologist 8 June 1916
and played a crucial role in research related to Weston Favell,
revealing the helical structure of DNA. He is widely Northamptonshire, England
known for the use of the term "central dogma" to Died 28 July 2004 (aged 88)
summarise the idea that once information is transferred San Diego, California, US
from nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) to proteins, it Alma mater University College London
cannot flow back to nucleic acids. In other words, the
University of London (BSc)
final step in the flow of information from nucleic acids
to proteins is irreversible.[7] University of Cambridge (PhD)
Occupations Molecular biologist · biophysicist
During the remainder of his career, he held the post of · neuroscientist
J.W. Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor at
Known for Crick, Brenner et al. experiment
the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla,
California. His later research centred on theoretical Watson–Crick pair
neurobiology and attempts to advance the scientific Coiled coil
study of human consciousness. He remained in this DNA structure
post until his death; "he was editing a manuscript on mRNA
his death bed, a scientist until the bitter end" according
Adaptor hypothesis
to Christof Koch.[8]
Sequence hypothesis
Wobble hypothesis
Early life and education Central dogma
Consciousness
Reverse learning
Selfish genetic element
Crick was the first son of Harry Crick and Annie Spouses Ruth Doreen Dodd
Elizabeth Crick (née Wilkins). He was born on 8 June ​
​(m. 1940; div. 1947)​
1916[4] and raised in Weston Favell, then a small Odile Speed ​(m. 1949)​
village near the English town of Northampton, in
Children 3
which Crick's father and uncle ran the family's boot
and shoe factory. His grandfather, Walter Drawbridge Awards Albert Lasker Award for Basic
Crick, an amateur naturalist, wrote a survey of local Medical Research (1960)
foraminifera (single-celled protists with shells), Gairdner Foundation
corresponded with Charles Darwin,[9] and had two International Award (1962)
gastropods (snails or slugs) named after him. Nobel Prize (1962)
Mendel Medal (1966)
At an early age, Francis was attracted to science and
what he could learn about it from books. As a child, he Royal Medal (1972)
was taken to church by his parents. But by about age Copley Medal (1975)
12, he said he did not want to go any more as he Sir Hans Krebs Medal (1977)
preferred a scientific search for answers over religious Albert Medal (1987)
belief.[10]
Golden Plate Award of the
Walter Crick, his uncle, lived in a small house on the American Academy of
south side of Abington Avenue; he had a shed at the Achievement[1] (1987)
bottom of his little garden where he taught Crick to Order of Merit (1991)
blow glass, do chemical experiments and to make Scientific career
photographic prints. When he was eight or nine he Fields Physics
transferred to the most junior form of the Northampton
Grammar School, on the Billing Road. This was about Molecular biology

1.25 mi (2 km) from his home so he could walk there Institutions University of Cambridge
and back, by Park Avenue South and Abington Park University College London
Crescent, but he more often went by bus or, later, by
Cavendish Laboratory
bicycle. The teaching in the higher forms was
Laboratory of Molecular Biology
satisfactory, but not as stimulating. After the age of 14,
he was educated at Mill Hill School in London (on a Salk Institute for Biological
scholarship), where he studied mathematics, physics, Studies
and chemistry with his best friend John Shilston. He Thesis Polypeptides and proteins: X-ray
shared the Walter Knox Prize for Chemistry on Mill studies (https://ethos.bl.uk/Order
Hill School's Foundation Day, Friday, 7 July 1933. He Details.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.5981
declared that his success was founded on the quality of 46) (1954)
teaching he received whilst a pupil at Mill Hill. Doctoral Max Perutz[2]
advisor
Crick studied at University College London (UCL), a
constituent college of the University of London[11] and Doctoral None[2]
earned a Bachelor of Science degree awarded by the students
University of London in 1937. Crick began a PhD at Website www.crick.ac.uk/about-us
UCL, but was interrupted by World War II. He later /francis-crick (http://www.crick.a
became a PhD student[12] and Honorary Fellow of c.uk/about-us/francis-crick)
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and mainly Signature
worked at the Cavendish Laboratory and the Medical
Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular
Biology in Cambridge. He was also an Honorary
Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and of
University College, London.

Crick began a PhD research project on measuring the viscosity of water at high temperatures (which he
later described as "the dullest problem imaginable"[13]) in the laboratory of physicist Edward Neville da
Costa Andrade at University College London, but with the outbreak of World War II (in particular, an
incident during the Battle of Britain when a bomb fell through the roof of the laboratory and destroyed his
experimental apparatus),[2] Crick was deflected from a possible career in physics. During his second year
as a PhD student, however, he was awarded the Carey Foster Research Prize, a great honour.[14] He did
postdoctoral work at the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute,[15] now part of the New York
University Tandon School of Engineering.

During World War II, he worked for the Admiralty Research Laboratory, from which many notable
scientists emerged, including David Bates, Robert Boyd, Thomas Gaskell, George Deacon, John Gunn,
Harrie Massey, and Nevill Mott;[16] he worked on the design of magnetic and acoustic mines and was
instrumental in designing a new mine that was effective against German minesweepers.[17]

Post-World War Two life and work

In 1947, aged 31, Crick began studying biology and became part of an important migration of physical
scientists into biology research. This migration was made possible by the newly won influence of
physicists such as Sir John Randall, who had helped win the war with inventions such as radar. Crick had
to adjust from the "elegance and deep simplicity" of physics to the "elaborate chemical mechanisms that
natural selection had evolved over billions of years." He described this transition as, "almost as if one had
to be born again". According to Crick, the experience of learning physics had taught him something
important—hubris—and the conviction that since physics was already a success, great advances should
also be possible in other sciences such as biology. Crick felt that this attitude encouraged him to be more
daring than typical biologists who tended to concern themselves with the daunting problems of biology
and not the past successes of physics.

For the better part of two years, Crick worked on the physical properties of cytoplasm at Cambridge's
Strangeways Research Laboratory, headed by Honor Bridget Fell, with a Medical Research Council
studentship, until he joined Max Perutz and John Kendrew at the Cavendish Laboratory. The Cavendish
Laboratory at Cambridge was under the general direction of Sir Lawrence Bragg, who had won the Nobel
Prize in 1915 at the age of 25. Bragg was influential in the effort to beat a leading American chemist,
Linus Pauling, to the discovery of DNA's structure (after having been pipped at the post by Pauling's
success in determining the alpha helix structure of proteins). At the same time Bragg's Cavendish
Laboratory was also effectively competing with King's College London, whose Biophysics department
was under the direction of Randall. (Randall had refused Crick's application to work at King's College.)
Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins of King's College were personal friends, which influenced subsequent
scientific events as much as the close friendship between Crick and James Watson. Crick and Wilkins
first met at King's College and not, as erroneously recorded by two authors, at the Admiralty during
World War II.

Personal life
Crick married twice and fathered three children; his brother Anthony (born in 1918) predeceased him in
1966.[18]

Spouses:

Ruth Doreen Crick, née Dodd (m. 18 February 1940 – 8 May 1947), became Mrs. James
Stewart Potter
Odile Crick, née Speed (m. 14 August 1949 – 28 July 2004)
Children:

Michael Francis Compton (b. 25 November 1940) [by Doreen Crick]

Gabrielle Anne (b. 15 July 1951) [by Odile Crick]
Jacqueline Marie-Therese [later Nichols] (b. 12 March 1954, d. 28 February 2011) [by Odile
Crick];
Crick died of colon cancer on the morning of 28 July 2004[4] at the University of California, San Diego
(UCSD) Thornton Hospital in La Jolla; he was cremated and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific
Ocean. A public memorial was held on 27 September 2004 at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, near San Diego,
California; guest speakers included James Watson, Sydney Brenner, Alex Rich, Seymour Benzer, Aaron
Klug, Christof Koch, Pat Churchland, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Tomaso Poggio, Leslie Orgel, Terry
Sejnowski, his son Michael Crick, and his younger daughter Jacqueline Nichols.[19] A private memorial
for family and colleagues was held on 3 August 2004.

Crick's Nobel Prize medal and diploma from the Nobel committee was sold at auction in June 2013 for
$2,270,000. It was bought by Jack Wang, the CEO of Chinese medical company Biomobie.[20][21] 20% of
the sale price of the medal was donated to the Francis Crick Institute in London.[21]

Research
Crick was interested in two fundamental unsolved problems of biology: how molecules make the
transition from the non-living to the living, and how the brain makes a conscious mind.[22] He realised
that his background made him more qualified for research on the first topic and the field of biophysics. It
was at this time of Crick's transition from physics to biology that he was influenced by both Linus
Pauling and Erwin Schrödinger.[23] It was clear in theory that covalent bonds in biological molecules
could provide the structural stability needed to hold genetic information in cells. It only remained as an
exercise of experimental biology to discover exactly which molecule was the genetic molecule.[24][25] In
Crick's view, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Gregor Mendel's genetics and
knowledge of the molecular basis of genetics, when combined, revealed the secret of life.[26] Crick had
the very optimistic view that life would very soon be created in a test tube. However, some people (such
as fellow researcher and colleague Esther Lederberg) thought that Crick was unduly optimistic.[27]
It was clear that some macromolecule such as a protein was likely to be the genetic molecule.[28]
However, it was well known that proteins are structural and functional macromolecules, some of which
carry out enzymatic reactions of cells.[28] In the 1940s, some evidence had been found pointing to another
macromolecule, DNA, the other major component of chromosomes, as a candidate genetic molecule. In
the 1944 Avery-MacLeod-McCarty experiment, Oswald Avery and his collaborators showed that a
heritable phenotypic difference could be caused in bacteria by providing them with a particular DNA
molecule.[25]

However, other evidence was interpreted as suggesting that DNA was structurally uninteresting and
possibly just a molecular scaffold for the apparently more interesting protein molecules.[29] Crick was in
the right place, in the right frame of mind, at the right time (1949), to join Max Perutz's project at the
University of Cambridge, and he began to work on the X-ray crystallography of proteins.[30] X-ray
crystallography theoretically offered the opportunity to reveal the molecular structure of large molecules
like proteins and DNA, but there were serious technical problems then preventing X-ray crystallography
from being applicable to such large molecules.[30]

1949–1950
Crick taught himself the mathematical theory of X-ray crystallography.[31] During the period of Crick's
study of X-ray diffraction, researchers in the Cambridge lab were attempting to determine the most stable
helical conformation of amino acid chains in proteins (the alpha helix). Linus Pauling was the first to
identify[32] the 3.6 amino acids per helix turn ratio of the alpha helix. Crick was witness to the kinds of
errors that his co-workers made in their failed attempts to make a correct molecular model of the alpha
helix; these turned out to be important lessons that could be applied, in the future, to the helical structure
of DNA. For example, he learned[33] the importance of the structural rigidity that double bonds confer on
molecular structures which is relevant both to peptide bonds in proteins and the structure of nucleotides in
DNA.

1951–1953: DNA structure

In 1951 and 1952, together with William Cochran and Vladimir Vand, Crick assisted in the development
of a mathematical theory of X-ray diffraction by a helical molecule.[34] This theoretical result matched
well with X-ray data for proteins that contain sequences of amino acids in the alpha helix
conformation.[35] Helical diffraction theory turned out to also be useful for understanding the structure of
DNA.

Late in 1951, Crick started working with James Watson at Cavendish Laboratory at the University of
Cambridge, England. Using "Photo 51" (the X-ray diffraction results of Rosalind Franklin and her
graduate student Raymond Gosling of King's College London, given to them by Gosling and Franklin's
colleague Wilkins), Watson and Crick together developed a model for a helical structure of DNA, which
they published in 1953.[36] For this and subsequent work they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine in 1962 with Wilkins.[37][38]

When Watson came to Cambridge, Crick was a 35-year-old graduate student (due to his work during
WWII) and Watson was only 23, but had already obtained a PhD. They shared an interest in the
fundamental problem of learning how genetic information might be stored in molecular form.[39][40]
Watson and Crick talked endlessly about DNA and the idea that it might be possible to guess a good
molecular model of its structure.[24] A key piece of experimentally-derived information came from X-ray
diffraction images that had been obtained by Wilkins, Franklin, and Gosling. In November 1951, Wilkins
came to Cambridge and shared his data with Watson and Crick. Alexander Stokes (another expert in
helical diffraction theory) and Wilkins (both at King's College) had reached the conclusion that X-ray
diffraction data for DNA indicated that the molecule had a helical structure—but Franklin vehemently
disputed this conclusion. Stimulated by their discussions with Wilkins and what Watson learned by
attending a talk given by Franklin about her work on DNA, Crick and Watson produced and showed off
an erroneous first model of DNA. Their hurry to produce a model of DNA structure was driven in part by
the knowledge that they were competing against Linus Pauling. Given Pauling's recent success in
discovering the Alpha helix, they feared that Pauling might also be the first to determine the structure of
DNA.[41]

Many have speculated about what might have happened had Pauling been able to travel to Britain as
planned in May 1952.[42] As it was, his political activities caused his travel to be restricted by the United
States government and he did not visit the UK until later, at which point he met none of the DNA
researchers in England. At any rate he was preoccupied with proteins at the time, not DNA.[42][43] Watson
and Crick were not officially working on DNA. Crick was writing his PhD thesis; Watson also had other
work such as trying to obtain crystals of myoglobin for X-ray diffraction experiments. In 1952, Watson
performed X-ray diffraction on tobacco mosaic virus and found results indicating that it had helical
structure. Having failed once, Watson and Crick were now somewhat reluctant to try again and for a
while they were forbidden to make further efforts to find a molecular model of DNA.

Of great importance to the model building effort of Watson and

Crick was Rosalind Franklin's understanding of basic chemistry,
which indicated that the hydrophilic phosphate-containing
backbones of the nucleotide chains of DNA should be positioned
so as to interact with water molecules on the outside of the
molecule while the hydrophobic bases should be packed into the
core. Franklin shared this chemical knowledge with Watson and
Crick when she pointed out to them that their first model (from
1951, with the phosphates inside) was obviously wrong.

Crick described what he saw as the failure of Wilkins and Franklin

to cooperate and work towards finding a molecular model of DNA
as a major reason why he and Watson eventually made a second
attempt to do so. They asked for, and received, permission to do so
from both William Lawrence Bragg and Wilkins. To construct
their model of DNA, Watson and Crick made use of information
from unpublished X-ray diffraction images of Franklin's (shown at
meetings and freely shared by Wilkins), including preliminary
Diagram that emphasises the
accounts of Franklin's results/photographs of the X-ray images
phosphate backbone of DNA.
that were included in a written progress report for the King's Watson and Crick first made helical
College laboratory of Sir John Randall from late 1952. models with the phosphates at the
centre of the helices.
It is a matter of debate whether Watson and Crick should have had
access to Franklin's results without her knowledge or permission,
and before she had a chance to formally publish the results of her detailed analysis of her X-ray
diffraction data which were included in the progress report. However, Watson and Crick found fault in
her steadfast assertion that, according to her data, a helical structure was not the only possible shape for
DNA—so they had a dilemma. In an effort to clarify this issue, Max Ferdinand Perutz later published
what had been in the progress report,[44] and suggested that nothing was in the report that Franklin herself
had not said in her talk (attended by Watson) in late 1951. Perutz explained that the report was to a
Medical Research Council (MRC) committee that had been created to "establish contact between the
different groups of people working for the Council". Randall's and Perutz's laboratories were both funded
by the MRC.

It is also not clear how important Franklin's unpublished results from the progress report actually were for
the model-building done by Watson and Crick. After the first crude X-ray diffraction images of DNA
were collected in the 1930s, William Astbury had talked about stacks of nucleotides spaced at 3.4
angström (0.34 nanometre) intervals in DNA. A citation to Astbury's earlier X-ray diffraction work was
one of only eight references in Franklin's first paper on DNA.[45] Analysis of Astbury's published DNA
results and the better X-ray diffraction images collected by Wilkins and Franklin revealed the helical
nature of DNA. It was possible to predict the number of bases stacked within a single turn of the DNA
helix (10 per turn; a full turn of the helix is 27 angströms [2.7 nm] in the compact A form, 34 angströms
[3.4 nm] in the wetter B form). Wilkins shared this information about the B form of DNA with Crick and
Watson. Crick did not see Franklin's B form X-ray images (Photo 51) until after the DNA double helix
model was published.[46]

One of the few references cited by Watson and Crick when they published their model of DNA was to a
published article that included Sven Furberg's DNA model that had the bases on the inside. Thus, the
Watson and Crick model was not the first "bases in" model to be proposed. Furberg's results had also
provided the correct orientation of the DNA sugars with respect to the bases. During their model building,
Crick and Watson learned that an antiparallel orientation of the two nucleotide chain backbones worked
best to orient the base pairs in the centre of a double helix. Crick's access to Franklin's progress report of
late 1952 is what made Crick confident that DNA was a double helix with antiparallel chains, but there
were other chains of reasoning and sources of information that also led to these conclusions.[47]

As a result of leaving King's College for Birkbeck College, Franklin was asked by John Randall to give
up her work on DNA. When it became clear to Wilkins and the supervisors of Watson and Crick that
Franklin was going to the new job, and that Linus Pauling was working on the structure of DNA, they
were willing to share Franklin's data with Watson and Crick, in the hope that they could find a good
model of DNA before Pauling was able. Franklin's X-ray diffraction data for DNA and her systematic
analysis of DNA's structural features were useful to Watson and Crick in guiding them towards a correct
molecular model. The key problem for Watson and Crick, which could not be resolved by the data from
King's College, was to guess how the nucleotide bases pack into the core of the DNA double helix.

Another key to finding the correct structure of DNA was the so-called Chargaff ratios, experimentally
determined ratios of the nucleotide subunits of DNA: the amount of guanine is equal to cytosine and the
amount of adenine is equal to thymine. A visit by Erwin Chargaff to England, in 1952, reinforced the
salience of this important fact for Watson and Crick. The significance of these ratios for the structure of
DNA were not recognised until Watson, persisting in building structural models, realised that A:T and
C:G pairs are structurally similar. In particular, the length of each base pair is the same. Chargaff had also
pointed out to Watson that, in the aqueous, saline environment of the cell, the predominant tautomers of
the pyrimidine (C and T) bases would be the amine and keto configurations of cytosine and thymine,
rather than the imino and enol forms that Crick and Watson had assumed. They consulted Jerry Donohue
who confirmed the most likely structures of the nucleotide
bases.[48] The base pairs are held together by hydrogen bonds, the
same non-covalent interaction that stabilise the protein α-helix.
The correct structures were essential for the positioning of the
hydrogen bonds. These insights led Watson to deduce the true
biological relationships of the A:T and C:G pairs. After the
discovery of the hydrogen bonded A:T and C:G pairs, Watson and
Crick soon had their anti-parallel, double helical model of DNA,
with the hydrogen bonds at the core of the helix providing a way
to "unzip" the two complementary strands for easy replication: the
last key requirement for a likely model of the genetic molecule. As
important as Crick's contributions to the discovery of the double
helical DNA model were, he stated that without the chance to
Diagrammatic representation of
collaborate with Watson, he would not have found the structure by
some key structural features of
himself.[49] DNA. The similar structures of
guanine:cytosine and
Crick did tentatively attempt to perform some experiments on adenine:thymine base pairs is
nucleotide base pairing, but he was more of a theoretical biologist illustrated. The base pairs are held
than an experimental biologist. There was another near-discovery together by hydrogen bonds. The
of the base pairing rules in early 1952. Crick had started to think phosphate backbones are anti-
about interactions between the bases. He asked John Griffith to try parallel.
to calculate attractive interactions between the DNA bases from
chemical principles and quantum mechanics. Griffith's best guess
was that A:T and G:C were attractive pairs. At that time, Crick was not aware of Chargaff's rules and he
made little of Griffith's calculations, although it did start him thinking about complementary replication.
Identification of the correct base-pairing rules (A-T, G-C) was achieved by Watson "playing" with
cardboard cut-out models of the nucleotide bases, much in the manner that Linus Pauling had discovered
the protein alpha helix a few years earlier. The Watson and Crick discovery of the DNA double helix
structure was made possible by their willingness to combine theory, modelling and experimental results
(albeit mostly done by others) to achieve their goal.

The DNA double helix structure proposed by Watson and Crick was based upon "Watson-Crick" bonds
between the four bases most frequently found in DNA (A, C, T, G) and RNA (A, C, U, G). However, later
research showed that triple-stranded, quadruple-stranded and other more complex DNA molecular
structures required Hoogsteen base pairing. The entire field of synthetic biology began with work by
researchers such as Erik T Kool, in which bases other than A, C, T and G are used in a synthetic DNA. In
addition to synthetic DNA there are also attempts to construct synthetic codons, synthetic endonucleases,
synthetic proteins and synthetic zinc fingers. Using synthetic DNA, instead of there being 43 codons, if
there are n new bases there could be as many as n3 codons. Research is currently being done to see if
codons can be expanded to more than 3 bases. These new codons can code for new amino acids. These
synthetic molecules can be used not only in medicine, but in creation of new materials.[50]

The discovery was made on 28 February 1953; the first Watson/Crick paper appeared in Nature on 25
April 1953. Sir Lawrence Bragg, the director of the Cavendish Laboratory, where Watson and Crick
worked, gave a talk at Guy's Hospital Medical School in London on Thursday 14 May 1953 which
resulted in an article by Ritchie Calder in the News Chronicle of London, on Friday 15 May 1953,
entitled "Why You Are You. Nearer Secret of Life." The news reached readers of The New York Times the
next day; Victor K. McElheny, in researching his biography, "Watson and DNA: Making a Scientific
Revolution", found a clipping of a six-paragraph New York Times article written from London and dated
16 May 1953 with the headline "Form of 'Life Unit' in Cell Is Scanned". The article ran in an early
edition and was then pulled to make space for news deemed more important. (The New York Times
subsequently ran a longer article on 12 June 1953). The university's undergraduate newspaper Varsity also
ran its own short article on the discovery on Saturday 30 May 1953. Bragg's original announcement of
the discovery at a Solvay conference on proteins in Belgium on 8 April 1953 went unreported by the
British press.

In a seven-page, handwritten letter[51] to his son at a British boarding school on 19 March 1953 Crick
explained his discovery, beginning the letter "My Dear Michael, Jim Watson and I have probably made a
most important discovery".[52] The letter was put up for auction at Christie's New York on 10 April 2013
with an estimate of $1 to $2 million, eventually selling for $6,059,750, the largest amount ever paid for a
letter at auction.[53]

Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Dorothy Hodgkin, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M Oughton, were some of the
first people in April 1953 to see the model of the structure of DNA, constructed by Crick and Watson; at
the time they were working at Oxford University's Chemistry Department. All were impressed by the new
DNA model, especially Brenner who subsequently worked with Crick at Cambridge in the Cavendish
Laboratory and the new Laboratory of Molecular Biology. According to the late Dr. Beryl Oughton, later
Rimmer, they all travelled together in two cars once Dorothy Hodgkin announced to them that they were
off to Cambridge to see the model of the structure of DNA.[54] Orgel also later worked with Crick at the
Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

Crick was often described as very talkative, with Watson – in The Double Helix – implying lack of
modesty.[55] His personality combined with his scientific accomplishments produced many opportunities
for Crick to stimulate reactions from others, both inside and outside the scientific world, which was the
centre of his intellectual and professional life.[56] Crick spoke rapidly, and rather loudly, and had an
infectious and reverberating laugh, and a lively sense of humour. One colleague from the Salk Institute
described him as "a brainstorming intellectual powerhouse with a mischievous smile. ... Francis was
never mean-spirited, just incisive. He detected microscopic flaws in logic. In a room full of smart
scientists, Francis continually re-earned his position as the heavyweight champ."[57]

Soon after Crick's death, there have been allegations about him having used LSD when he came to the
idea of the helix structure of the DNA.[58][59] While he almost certainly did use LSD, it is unlikely that he
did so as early as 1953.[60]

Molecular biology
In 1954, at the age of 37, Crick completed his PhD thesis: "X-Ray Diffraction: Polypeptides and
Proteins" and received his degree. Crick then worked in the laboratory of David Harker at Brooklyn
Polytechnic Institute, where he continued to develop his skills in the analysis of X-ray diffraction data for
proteins, working primarily on ribonuclease and the mechanisms of protein synthesis. David Harker, the
American X-ray crystallographer, was described as "the John Wayne of crystallography" by Vittorio
Luzzati, a crystallographer at the Centre for Molecular Genetics in Gif-sur-Yvette near Paris, who had
worked with Rosalind Franklin.
After the discovery of the double helix model of DNA, Crick's
interests quickly turned to the biological implications of the
structure. In 1953, Watson and Crick published another article in
Nature which stated: "it therefore seems likely that the precise
sequence of the bases is the code that carries the genetical
information".[61]

In 1956, Crick and Watson speculated on the

structure of small viruses. They suggested that
Collagen triple
spherical viruses such as Tomato bushy stunt
helix.
virus had icosahedral symmetry and were
made from 60 identical subunits.[62]

After his short time in New York, Crick returned to Cambridge

where he worked until 1976, at which time he moved to
California. Crick engaged in several X-ray diffraction Crick and Watson DNA model built
collaborations such as one with Alexander Rich on the structure of in 1953, was reconstructed largely
from its original pieces in 1973 and
collagen.[63] However, Crick was quickly drifting away from
donated to the National Science
continued work related to his expertise in the interpretation of X- Museum in London.
ray diffraction patterns of proteins.

George Gamow established a group of scientists interested in the role of RNA as an intermediary between
DNA as the genetic storage molecule in the nucleus of cells and the synthesis of proteins in the cytoplasm
(the RNA Tie Club). It was clear to Crick that there had to be a code by which a short sequence of
nucleotides would specify a particular amino acid in a newly synthesised protein. In 1956, Crick wrote an
informal paper about the genetic coding problem for the small group of scientists in Gamow's RNA
group.[64] In this article, Crick reviewed the evidence supporting the idea that there was a common set of
about 20 amino acids used to synthesise proteins. Crick proposed that there was a corresponding set of
small "adaptor molecules" that would hydrogen bond to short sequences of a nucleic acid, and also link to
one of the amino acids. He also explored the many theoretical possibilities by which short nucleic acid
sequences might code for the 20 amino acids.

During the mid-to-late 1950s Crick was very much intellectually engaged in sorting out the mystery of
how proteins are synthesised. By 1958, Crick's thinking had matured and he could list in an orderly way
all of the key features of the protein synthesis process:[7]

genetic information stored in the sequence of DNA molecules

a "messenger" RNA molecule to carry the instructions for making one protein to the
cytoplasm
adaptor molecules ("they might contain nucleotides") to match short sequences of
nucleotides in the RNA messenger molecules to specific amino acids
ribonucleic-protein complexes that catalyse the assembly of amino acids into proteins
according to the messenger RNA
The adaptor molecules were eventually shown to be tRNAs and the catalytic "ribonucleic-protein
complexes" became known as ribosomes. An important step was the realisation by Crick and Brenner on
15 April 1960 during a conversation with François Jacob that messenger RNA was not the same thing as
ribosomal RNA.[65] Later that summer, Brenner, Jacob, and Matthew Meselson conducted an experiment
which was the first to prove the existence of messenger RNA.[65] None of this, however, answered the
fundamental theoretical question of the exact nature of the genetic
code. In his 1958 article, Crick speculated, as had others, that a
triplet of nucleotides could code for an amino acid. Such a code
might be "degenerate", with 4×4×4=64 possible triplets of the four
nucleotide subunits while there were only 20 amino acids. Some
amino acids might have multiple triplet codes. Crick also explored
other codes in which, for various reasons, only some of the triplets
were used, "magically" producing just the 20 needed
combinations.[66] Experimental results were needed; theory alone
could not decide the nature of the code. Crick also used the term
"central dogma" to summarise an idea that implies that genetic
information flow between macromolecules would be essentially Molecular model of a tRNA
one-way: molecule. Crick predicted that such
adaptor molecules might exist as
DNA → RNA → protein the links between codons and amino
acids.
Some critics thought that by using the word "dogma", Crick was
implying that this was a rule that could not be questioned, but all
he really meant was that it was a compelling idea without much solid evidence to support it. In his
thinking about the biological processes linking DNA genes to proteins, Crick made explicit the distinction
between the materials involved, the energy required, and the information flow. Crick was focused on this
third component (information) and it became the organising principle of what became known as
molecular biology. Crick had by this time become a highly influential theoretical molecular biologist.

Proof that the genetic code is a degenerate triplet code finally came from genetics experiments, some of
which were performed by Crick.[67] The details of the code came mostly from work by Marshall
Nirenberg and others who synthesized synthetic RNA molecules and used them as templates for in vitro
protein synthesis.[68] Nirenberg first announced his results to a small audience in Moscow at a 1961
conference. Crick's reaction was to invite Nirenberg to deliver his talk to a larger audience.[69]

Controversy

Use of other researchers' data

Watson and Crick's use of DNA X-ray diffraction data collected by Franklin and Wilkins has generated an
enduring controversy. It arose from the fact that some of Franklin's unpublished data were used without
her knowledge or consent by Watson and Crick in their construction of the double helix model of
DNA.[38][70] Of the four DNA researchers, only Franklin had a degree in chemistry;[38] Wilkins and
Crick had backgrounds in physics, Watson in biology.

Prior to publication of the double helix structure, Watson and Crick had little direct interaction with
Franklin herself. They were, however, aware of her work, more aware than she herself realised. Watson
was present at a lecture, given in November 1951, where Franklin presented the two forms of the
molecule, type A and type B, and discussed the position of the phosphate units on the external part of the
molecule. In January 1953, Watson was shown an X-ray photograph of B-DNA (called photograph
51),[72] by Wilkins.[73][74] Wilkins had been given photograph 51 by Rosalind Franklin's PhD student
Raymond Gosling.[73][75] Wilkins and Gosling had worked
together in the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Biophysics
Unit before director John Randall appointed Franklin to take over
both DNA diffraction work and guidance of Gosling's thesis. It
appears that Randall did not communicate effectively with them
about Franklin's appointment, contributing to confusion and
friction between Wilkins and Franklin.[76] In the middle of Experimental set up of photo 51[71]
February 1953, Crick's thesis advisor, Max Perutz, gave Crick a
copy of a report written for a Medical Research Council
biophysics committee visit to King's in December 1952, containing data from the King's group, including
some of Franklin's crystallographic calculations.[77][78][79][80] Franklin was unaware that photograph 51
and other information had been shared with Crick and Watson. She wrote a series of three draft
manuscripts, two of which included a double helical DNA backbone. Her two manuscripts on form A
DNA reached Acta Crystallographica in Copenhagen on March 6, 1953,[81] one day before Crick and
Watson had completed their model.[82]

The X-ray diffraction images collected by Gosling and Franklin provided the best evidence for the helical
nature of DNA. Before this, both Linus Pauling, Watson, and Crick had generated erroneous models with
the chains inside and the bases pointing outwards.[83] Her experimental results provided estimates of the
water content of DNA crystals, and these results were most consistent with the three sugar-phosphate
backbones being on the outside of the molecule.[84] Franklin's X-Ray photograph showed that the
backbones had to be on the outside. Although she at first insisted vehemently that her data did not force
one to conclude that DNA has a helical structure, in the drafts she submitted in 1953 she argues for a
double helical DNA backbone.[85] Building on her manuscripts, she discovered that form A DNA had
antiparallel backbones, which supported the double helical structure of DNA.[86] She did this through
identification of the space group for DNA crystals. This would go to help Watson and Crick decide to
look for DNA models with two antiparallel polynucleotide strands.

In summary, Watson and Crick had three sources for Franklin's unpublished data: 1) her 1951 seminar,
attended by Watson,[87] 2) discussions with Wilkins,[88] who worked in the same laboratory with
Franklin, 3) a research progress report that was intended to promote coordination of Medical Research
Council-supported laboratories.[89] Watson, Crick, Wilkins and Franklin all worked in MRC laboratories.

Crick and Watson felt that they had benefited from collaborating with Wilkins. They offered him a co-
authorship on the article that first described the double helix structure of DNA. Wilkins turned down the
offer, a fact that may have led to the terse character of the acknowledgement of experimental work done
at King's College in the eventual published paper. Rather than make any of the DNA researchers at King's
College co-authors on the Watson and Crick double helix article, the solution that was arrived at was to
publish two additional papers from King's College along with the helix paper. Brenda Maddox suggests
that because of the importance of her experimental results in Watson and Crick's model building and
theoretical analysis, Franklin should have had her name on the original Watson and Crick paper in
Nature.[90] Franklin and Gosling submitted their own joint "second" paper to Nature at the same time as
Wilkins, Stokes, and Wilson submitted theirs (i.e. the "third" paper on DNA).[91]

Watson's portrayal of Franklin in The Double Helix was negative and gave the appearance that she was
Wilkins' assistant and was unable to interpret her own DNA data.[92] However, according to Nathaniel
Comfort, a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, Franklin's colleague Aaron Klug believed
that Franklin "..was 'two steps away' from the double helix. After completing an analysis of her lab
notebook, Klug stated that she surely would have had it.[93]

The X-ray diffraction images collected by Franklin provided the best evidence for the helical nature of
DNA. While Franklin's experimental work proved important to Crick and Watson's development of a
correct model, she herself could not realize it at the time. When she left King's College, Director Sir John
Randall insisted that all DNA work belonged exclusively to King's and ordered Franklin to not even think
about it.[94] Because of this, the scientific community did not understand the depth of Franklin's
contributions. Franklin subsequently did superb work in J. D. Bernal's Lab at Birkbeck College with the
tobacco mosaic virus, which also extended ideas on helical construction.[38]

Eugenics
Crick occasionally expressed his views on eugenics, usually in private letters. For example, Crick
advocated a form of positive eugenics in which wealthy parents would be encouraged to have more
children.[95] He once remarked, "In the long run, it is unavoidable that society will begin to worry about
the character of the next generation ... It is not a subject at the moment which we can tackle easily
because people have so many religious beliefs and until we have a more uniform view of ourselves I
think it would be risky to try and do anything in the way of eugenics ... I would be astonished if, in the
next 100 or 200 years, society did not come round to the view that they would have to try to improve the
next generation in some extent or one way or another."

Sexual harassment
Biologist Nancy Hopkins says when she was an undergraduate in the 1960s, Crick put his hands on her
breasts during a lab visit.[96] She described the incident: "Before I could rise and shake hands, he had
zoomed across the room, stood behind me, put his hands on my breasts and said, 'What are you working
on?' "[97]

Views on religion
Crick referred to himself as a humanist, which he defined as the belief "that human problems can and
must be faced in terms of human moral and intellectual resources without invoking supernatural
authority." He publicly called for humanism to replace religion as a guiding force for humanity, writing:

The human dilemma is hardly new. We find ourselves through no wish of our own on this
slowly revolving planet in an obscure corner of a vast universe. Our questioning intelligence
will not let us live in cow-like content with our lot. We have a deep need to know why we are
here. What is the world made of? More important, what are we made of? In the past religion
answered these questions, often in considerable detail. Now we know that almost all these
answers are highly likely to be nonsense, having sprung from man's ignorance and his
enormous capacity for self-deception ... The simple fables of the religions of the world have
come to seem like tales told to children. Even understood symbolically they are often
perverse, if not rather unpleasant ... Humanists, then, live in a mysterious, exciting and
intellectually expanding world, which, once glimpsed, makes the old worlds of the religions
seem fake-cosy and stale[98]
Crick was especially critical of Christianity:

I do not respect Christian beliefs. I think they are ridiculous. If we could get rid of them we
could more easily get down to the serious problem of trying to find out what the world is all
about.[99]

Crick once joked, "Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught
to young children."[100]

In his book Of Molecules and Men, Crick expressed his views on the relationship between science and
religion.[101] After suggesting that it would become possible for a computer to be programmed so as to
have a soul, he wondered: at what point during biological evolution did the first organism have a soul? At
what moment does a baby get a soul? Crick stated his view that the idea of a non-material soul that could
enter a body and then persist after death is just that, an imagined idea. For Crick, the mind is a product of
physical brain activity and the brain had evolved by natural means over millions of years. He felt that it
was important that evolution by natural selection be taught in schools and that it was regrettable that
English schools had compulsory religious instruction. He also considered that a new scientific world view
was rapidly being established, and predicted that once the detailed workings of the brain were eventually
revealed, erroneous Christian concepts about the nature of humans and the world would no longer be
tenable; traditional conceptions of the "soul" would be replaced by a new understanding of the physical
basis of mind. He was sceptical of organised religion, referring to himself as a sceptic and an agnostic
with "a strong inclination towards atheism".[102]

In 1960, Crick accepted an honorary fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge, one factor being that
the new college did not have a chapel. Some time later a large donation was made to establish a chapel
and the College Council decided to accept it. Crick resigned his fellowship in protest.[103][104]

In October 1969, Crick participated in a celebration of the 100th year of the journal Nature in which he
attempted to make some predictions about what the next 30 years would hold for molecular biology. His
speculations were later published in Nature.[105] Near the end of the article, Crick briefly mentioned the
search for life on other planets, but he held little hope that extraterrestrial life would be found by the year
2000. He also discussed what he described as a possible new direction for research, what he called
"biochemical theology". Crick wrote "so many people pray that one finds it hard to believe that they do
not get some satisfaction from it".[105] A field similar to Crick's hypothesized "biochemical theology"
now exists as neurotheology.[106]

Crick suggested that it might be possible to find chemical changes in the brain that were molecular
correlates of the act of prayer. He speculated that there might be a detectable change in the level of some
neurotransmitter or neurohormone when people pray. Crick's view of the relationship between science
and religion continued to play a role in his work as he made the transition from molecular biology
research into theoretical neuroscience.

Crick asked in 1998 "and if some of the Bible is manifestly wrong, why should any of the rest of it be
accepted automatically? ... And what would be more important than to find our true place in the universe
by removing one by one these unfortunate vestiges of earlier beliefs?"[107]
In 2003 he was one of 22 Nobel laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.[108]

Creationism
Crick was a firm critic of young Earth creationism. In the 1987 United States Supreme Court case
Edwards v. Aguillard, Crick joined a group of other Nobel laureates who advised, " 'Creation-science'
simply has no place in the public-school science classroom."[109] Crick was also an advocate for the
establishment of Darwin Day as a British national holiday.[110]

Directed panspermia
During the 1960s, Crick became concerned with the origins of the genetic code. In 1966, Crick took the
place of Leslie Orgel at a meeting where Orgel was to talk about the origin of life. Crick speculated about
possible stages by which an initially simple code with a few amino acid types might have evolved into the
more complex code used by existing organisms.[111] At that time, proteins were thought to be the only
kind of enzyme, and ribozymes had not yet been identified. Many molecular biologists were puzzled by
the problem of the origin of a protein replicating system that is as complex as that which exists in
organisms currently inhabiting Earth. In the early 1970s, Crick and Orgel further speculated about the
possibility that the production of living systems from molecules may have been a very rare event in the
universe, but once it had developed it could be spread by intelligent life forms using space travel
technology, a process they called "directed panspermia".[112] In a retrospective article,[113] Crick and
Orgel noted that they had been unduly pessimistic about the chances of abiogenesis on Earth when they
had assumed that some kind of self-replicating protein system was the molecular origin of life.

In 1976, Crick addressed the origin of protein synthesis in a paper with Sydney Brenner, Aaron Klug, and
George Pieczenik.[114] In this paper, they speculate that code constraints on nucleotide sequences allow
protein synthesis without the need for a ribosome. It, however, requires a five base binding between the
mRNA and tRNA with a flip of the anti-codon creating a triplet coding, even though it is a five-base
physical interaction. Thomas H. Jukes pointed out that the code constraints on the mRNA sequence
required for this translation mechanism is still preserved.[115]

Neuroscience and other interests

Crick's period at Cambridge was the pinnacle of his long scientific career, but he left Cambridge in 1977
after 30 years, having been offered (and having refused) the Mastership of Gonville and Caius. James
Watson claimed at a Cambridge conference marking the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the structure
of DNA in 2003:

Now perhaps it's a pretty well kept secret that one of the most uninspiring acts of the
University of Cambridge over this past century was to turn down Francis Crick when he
applied to be the Professor of Genetics, in 1958. Now there may have been a series of
arguments, which led them to reject Francis. It was really saying, don't push us to the
frontier.
The apparently "pretty well kept secret" had already been recorded
in Soraya De Chadarevian's Designs For Life: Molecular Biology
After World War II, published by Cambridge University Press in
2002. His major contribution to molecular biology in Cambridge
is well documented in The History of the University of
Cambridge: Volume 4 (1870 to 1990), which was published by
CUP in 1992.
Results from an fMRI experiment in
According to the University of Cambridge's genetics department which people made a conscious
decision about a visual stimulus.
official website, the electors of the professorship could not reach
The small region of the brain
consensus, prompting the intervention of then University Vice-
coloured orange shows patterns of
Chancellor Lord Adrian. Lord Adrian first offered the activity that correlate with the
professorship to a compromise candidate, Guido Pontecorvo, who decision making process. Crick
refused, and is said to have offered it then to Crick, who also stressed the importance of finding
refused. new methods to probe human brain
function.
In 1976, Crick took a sabbatical year at the Salk Institute for
Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. Crick had been a
nonresident fellow of the Institute since 1960. Crick wrote, "I felt at home in Southern California."[116]
After the sabbatical, Crick left Cambridge to continue working at the Salk Institute. He was also an
adjunct professor at the University of California, San Diego.[117][118][119] He taught himself
neuroanatomy and studied many other areas of neuroscience research. It took him several years to
disengage from molecular biology because exciting discoveries continued to be made, including the
discovery of alternative splicing and the discovery of restriction enzymes, which helped make possible
genetic engineering. Eventually, in the 1980s, Crick was able to devote his full attention to his other
interest, consciousness. His autobiographical book, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific
Discovery, includes a description of why he left molecular biology and switched to neuroscience.

Upon taking up work in theoretical neuroscience, Crick was struck by several things:

there were many isolated subdisciplines within neuroscience with little contact between
them
many people who were interested in behaviour treated the brain as a black box
consciousness was viewed as a taboo subject by many neurobiologists
Crick hoped he might aid progress in neuroscience by promoting constructive interactions between
specialists from the many different subdisciplines concerned with consciousness. He also collaborated
with neurophilosophers such as Patricia Churchland. In 1983, as a result of their studies of computer
models of neural networks, Crick and Mitchison proposed that the function of REM sleep and dreaming
is to remove certain modes of interactions in networks of cells in the mammalian cerebral cortex; they
called this hypothetical process "reverse learning" or "unlearning". In the final phase of his career, Crick
established a collaboration with Christof Koch that led to publication of a series of articles on
consciousness during the period spanning from 1990[120] to 2005. Crick made the strategic decision to
focus his theoretical investigation of consciousness on how the brain generates visual awareness within a
few hundred milliseconds of viewing a scene. Crick and Koch proposed that consciousness seems so
mysterious because it involves very short-term memory processes that are as yet poorly understood. In his
book The Astonishing Hypothesis, Crick described how neurobiology had reached a mature enough stage
so that consciousness could be the subject of a unified effort to study it at the molecular, cellular and
behavioural levels. Crick was sceptical about the value of computational models of mental function that
are not based on details about brain structure and function.

Crick was aware that research on consciousness was a difficult task, as he wrote to Martynas Yčas in
April 1996:

I don't think we shall fully understand consciousness by the end of this century, but it's
possible we can get a glimpse of the answer by then. Whether it will all fall into place, as
molecular biology did, without a vital force, or whether we need a radical formulation, only
time will tell. Best wishes, Yours, Francis. P.S. By the way, I've not been knighted.[121]

Awards and honours

In addition to his third share of the 1962 Nobel prize for Physiology or
Medicine, he received many awards and honours, including the Royal and
Copley medals of the Royal Society (1972 and 1975), and also the Order of
Merit (on 27 November 1991); he refused an offer of a CBE in 1963,[122] but
was often referred to in error as 'Sir Francis Crick' and even on occasions as
'Lord Crick'. He was elected an EMBO Member in 1964.[123]

The award of Nobel prizes to John Kendrew and Max Perutz, and to Crick,
Watson, and Wilkins was satirised in a short sketch in the BBC TV
programme That Was The Week That Was with the Nobel Prizes being
referred to as 'The Alfred Nobel Peace Pools'.

He was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

(1962),[124] the United States National Academy of Sciences (1969),[125] and
the American Philosophical Society (1972).[126]
Stained glass window in
the dining hall of Caius
Francis Crick Medal and Lecture College, in Cambridge,
commemorating Francis
The Francis Crick Medal and Lecture[127] was established in 2003 following
Crick and representing
an endowment by his former colleague, Sydney Brenner, joint winner of the the double helical
2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.[128] The lecture is delivered structure of B-DNA.
annually in any field of biological sciences, with preference given to the
areas in which Francis Crick himself worked. Importantly, the lectureship is
aimed at younger scientists, ideally under 40, or whose career progression corresponds to this age. As of
2019, Crick lectures have been delivered by Julie Ahringer, Dario Alessi, Ewan Birney, Simon Boulton,
Jason Chin, Simon Fisher, Matthew Hurles, Gilean McVean, Duncan Odom, Geraint Rees, Sarah
Teichmann, M. Madan Babu and Daniel Wolpert.

Francis Crick Institute

The Francis Crick Institute is a £660 million biomedical research centre located in north London, United
Kingdom.[129] The Francis Crick Institute is a partnership between Cancer Research UK, Imperial
College London, King's College London, the Medical Research Council, University College London
(UCL) and the Wellcome Trust.[130] Completed in 2016, it is the largest centre for biomedical research
and innovation in Europe.[129]

Francis Crick Graduate Lectures

The University of Cambridge Graduate School of Biological, Medical and Veterinary Sciences hosts The
Francis Crick Graduate Lectures. The first two lectures were by John Gurdon and Tim Hunt.[131][132]

Other honours
The inscription on the helices of a DNA sculpture (which was donated by James Watson)
outside Clare College's Thirkill Court, Cambridge, England reads: "The structure of DNA
was discovered in 1953 by Francis Crick and James Watson while Watson lived here at
Clare." and on the base: "The double helix model was supported by the work of Rosalind
Franklin and Maurice Wilkins."
Another sculpture entitled Discovery, by artist Lucy Glendinning was installed on Tuesday,
13 December 2005 in Abington Street, Northampton. According to the late Lynn Wilson,
chairman of the Wilson Foundation, "The sculpture celebrates the life of a world class
scientist who must surely be considered the greatest Northamptonian of all time — by
discovering DNA he unlocked the whole future of genetics and the alphabet of life."
Westminster City Council unveiled a green plaque to Francis Crick on the front façade of 56
St George's Square, Pimlico, London SW1 on 20 June 2007; Crick lived in the first floor flat,
together with Robert Dougall of BBC radio and later TV fame, a former Royal Navy
associate.[133]
In addition, Crick was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1959,[3][4] a Fellow of
the International Academy of Humanism, and a Fellow of CSICOP.
In 1987, Crick received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of
Achievement.[1][134]
At a meeting of the executive council of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) (formerly
CSICOP) in Denver, Colorado in April 2011, Crick was selected for inclusion in CSI's
Pantheon of Skeptics. The Pantheon of Skeptics was created by CSI to remember the
legacy of deceased fellows of CSI and their contributions to the cause of scientific
scepticism.[135]
A sculpted bust of Francis Crick by John Sherrill Houser, which incorporates a single
"Golden" Helix, was cast in bronze in the artist's studio in New Mexico, US. The bronze was
first displayed at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference (on Consciousness) at the
University of Cambridge's Churchill College on 7 July 2012; it was bought by Mill Hill School
in May 2013, and displayed at the inaugural Crick Dinner on 8 June 2013, and will be again
at their Crick Centenary Dinner in 2016.
The Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences of the
American Philosophical Society (2001), together with Watson.[136]
Crick featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to mark the diamond
Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in 2012. A panel of seven academics, journalists and
historians named Crick among a group of 60 people in the UK "whose actions during the
 reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and given the age
its character".[137]

Books
Of Molecules and Men (Prometheus Books, 2004; original edition 1967) ISBN 1-59102-185-
5
Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature (Simon & Schuster, 1981) ISBN 0-671-25562-2
What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (Basic Books reprint edition,
1990) ISBN 0-465-09138-5
The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (Scribner reprint edition,
1995) ISBN 0-684-80158-2
Georg Kreisel: a Few Personal Recollections. In: Kreiseliana: About and Around Georg
Kreisel (1996), pp. 25–32. ISBN 1-56881-061-X

See also
Crick, Brenner et al. experiment
Crick's wobble hypothesis
History of RNA biology
List of RNA biologists
Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids (article)
Neural correlates of consciousness

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Sources
Crick, Francis (1990). What Mad Pursuit: a Personal View of Scientific Discovery
(reprint ed.). New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-09138-5.
Maddox, Brenda (2002). Rosalind Franklin: the dark lady of DNA (https://archive.org/details/
rosalindfranklin00madd). London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-018407-8.
Olby, Robert (2009). Francis Crick: Hunter of Life's Secrets. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Press. ISBN 978-0-87969-798-3.
Ridley, Matt (2006). Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code. Ashland, OH: Atlas
Books. ISBN 0-06-082333-X.
Wilkins, Maurice (2003). The Third Man of the Double Helix: The Autobiography of Maurice
Wilkins. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860665-6.

Further reading
John Bankston, Francis Crick and James D. Watson; Francis Crick and James Watson:
Pioneers in DNA Research (Mitchell Lane Publishers, Inc., 2002) ISBN 1-58415-122-6.
Bill Bryson; A Short History of Nearly Everything (Broadway Books, 2003) ISBN 0-7679-
0817-1.
Soraya De Chadarevian; Designs For Life: Molecular Biology After World War II, CUP 2002,
444 pp; ISBN 0-521-57078-6.
Roderick Braithwaite. Strikingly Alive: The History of the Mill Hill School Foundation 1807–
2007; published Phillimore & Co. ISBN 978-1-86077-330-3
Edwin Chargaff; Heraclitean Fire, Rockefeller Press, 1978.
S. Chomet (Ed.), D.N.A. Genesis of a Discovery, 1994, Newman- Hemisphere Press,
London
 Dickerson, Richard E.; Present at the Flood: How Structural Molecular Biology Came About,
Sinauer, 2005; ISBN 0-87893-168-6.
Edward Edelson, Francis Crick And James Watson: And the Building Blocks of Life, Oxford
University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-513971-2.
John Finch; A Nobel Fellow On Every Floor, Medical Research Council 2008, 381 pp,
ISBN 978-1-84046-940-0.
Hager, Thomas; Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling, Simon & Schuster 1995;
ISBN 0-684-80909-5
Graeme Hunter; Light Is A Messenger, the life and science of William Lawrence Bragg
(Oxford University Press, 2004) ISBN 0-19-852921-X.
Horace Freeland Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation. Makers of the Revolution in Biology;
Penguin Books 1995, first published by Jonathan Cape, 1977; ISBN 0-14-017800-7.
Errol C. Friedberg; Sydney Brenner: A Biography, pub. CSHL Press October 2010, ISBN 0-
87969-947-7.
Torsten Krude (Ed.); DNA Changing Science and Society (ISBN 0-521-82378-1) CUP 2003.
(The Darwin Lectures for 2003, including one by Sir Aaron Klug on Rosalind Franklin's
involvement in the determination of the structure of DNA).
Robert Olby; The Path to The Double Helix: Discovery of DNA; first published in October
1974 by MacMillan, with foreword by Francis Crick; ISBN 0-486-68117-3; revised in 1994,
with a 9-page postscript.
Robert Olby; Oxford National Dictionary article: Crick, Francis Harry Compton (1916–2004).
In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, January 2008.
Anne Sayre. 1975. Rosalind Franklin and DNA. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
ISBN 0-393-32044-8.
James D. Watson; The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure
of DNA, Atheneum, 1980, ISBN 0-689-70602-2 (first published in 1968) is a very readable
firsthand account of the research by Crick and Watson. The book also formed the basis of
the award-winning television dramatisation Life Story by BBC Horizon (also broadcast as
Race for the Double Helix). [The Norton Critical Edition, which was published in 1980, edited
by Gunther S. Stent: ISBN 0-393-01245-X]
James D. Watson; Avoid Boring People and Other Lessons from a Life in Science, New
York: Random House. ISBN 978-0-375-41284-4.

External links
The Francis Crick Institute (http://www.crick.ac.uk/about-us/francis-crick)
"Francis Harry Compton Crick (1916–2004)" by A. Andrei at the Embryo Project
Encyclopedia (http://embryo.asu.edu/pages/francis-harry-compton-crick-1916-2004)
Francis Crick (https://www.nobelprize.org/laureate/372) on Nobelprize.org
Portraits of Francis Crick (https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?LinkID=mp
05207) at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Crick papers

Register of Francis Crick Personal Papers – MSS 660 (https://web.archive.org/web/2007082

5101712/http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/testing/html/mss0660a.html#abstract) Crick's
personal papers at Mandeville Special Collections Library, Geisel Library, University of
California, San Diego
Francis Crick Archive — Papers by Francis Crick are available for study at the Wellcome
Library's Archives and Manuscripts department. These papers include those dealing with
Crick's career after he moved to the Salk Institute in San Diego. The digitised papers are
 available at Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics: the Francis Crick papers (http://well
comelibrary.org/using-the-library/subject-guides/genetics/makers-of-modern-genetics/digitis
ed-archives/francis-crick/)
Comprehensive list of pdf files of Crick's papers from 1950 to 1990 (https://profiles.nlm.nih.g
ov/SC/Views/AlphaChron/date/10002/) – National Library of Medicine.
Francis Crick papers (http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/crick/index.html) – Nature.com
Key Participants: Francis H. C. Crick (http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/col
l/pauling/dna/people/crick.html) – Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA: A Documentary
History
Audio and video files

An interview with Francis Crick and Christof Koch, 2001 (http://www.artboy.info/strange/liste

n.html) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20090303085551/http://www.artboy.info/strang
e/listen.html) 3 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine
Listen to Francis Crick (https://web.archive.org/web/20121022011228/http://www.bl.uk/onlin
egallery/features/beautifulminds/sounds.html#compton)
The Quest for Consciousness (http://www.artboy.info/strange/listen.html#Christof1) Archived
(https://web.archive.org/web/20090303085551/http://www.artboy.info/strange/listen.html#Ch
ristof1) 3 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine – The Quest for Consciousness – 65 minute
audio program — a conversation on Consciousness with neurobiologist Francis Crick of the
Salk Institute and neurobiologist Christof Koch from Caltech.
Listen (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/audiointerviews/profilepages/crickwatson1.shtml) to
Francis Crick and James Watson talking on the BBC in 1962, 1972, and 1974.
The Impact of Linus Pauling on Molecular Biology (http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialc
ollections/events/1995paulingconference/video-s1-2-crick.html) – a 1995 talk delivered by
Crick at Oregon State University
About his work

The Crick Papers (https://web.archive.org/web/20081224001514/http://genome.wellcome.a

c.uk/node30074.html) at the Wellcome Trust.
"Quiet debut for the double helix" (https://web.archive.org/web/20070207145444/http://chem
-faculty.ucsd.edu/joseph/CHEM13/DNA1.pdf) by Professor Robert Olby, Nature 421 (23
January 2003): 402–405.
Reading list (https://web.archive.org/web/20050826083936/http://www.ncbe.reading.ac.uk/D
NA50/reviews.html) for discovery of DNA story from the National Centre for Biotechnology
Education.
Papers of Francis Crick, 1953-1969 (https://archivesearch.lib.cam.ac.uk/repositories/9/archi
val_objects/461354) held at Churchill Archives Centre
About his life

Olby's Australian lecture, March 2010 (http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2010/prof

essor_robert_olby.shtml)
Salk Institute Press Release (https://web.archive.org/web/20041012184112/http://www.salk.
edu/news/releases/details.php?id=103) on the death of Francis Crick.
The Francis Crick Papers (https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/SC/) – Profiles in Science, National
Library of Medicine
Obituary (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article463763.ece) in The Times
(London) of Francis Crick, 30 July 2004.
Francis Crick Obituary (http://www.biochemist.org/bio/02605/0080/026050080.pdf) The
Biochemist
Miscellaneous

National DNA Day, 25 April 2006 Moderated Chat Transcript Archive (https://web.archive.or
g/web/20060517004945/http://www.genome.gov/18516768)
Independent On Line article (https://web.archive.org/web/20060615141650/http://news.inde
pendent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article702961.ece) about Consciousness, 7 June
2006.
Siegel RM, Callaway EM (December 2004). "Francis Crick's Legacy for Neuroscience:
Between the α and the Ω" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC535570). PLOS
Biology. 2 (12): e419. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020419 (https://doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.
pbio.0020419). PMC 535570 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC535570).
PMID 17593891 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17593891).
100 Scientists and Thinkers: James Watson and Francis Crick (https://web.archive.org/web/
20000510021309/http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/watsoncrick.html) from
Time magazine.
Francis Crick: Nobel Prize 1962, Physiology or Medicine (https://archive.today/2006092418
1633/http://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/archive/Crick62.html)
First press stories on DNA (https://web.archive.org/web/20060618160456/http://www.packer
34.freeserve.co.uk/selectedTATAwebsites.htm) but for the "second" DNA story in The New
York Times, see: https://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/science/dna-article.pdf — for
reproduction of the original text in June 1953.
50th anniversary series of articles (https://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2003/02/25/health/gen
etics/index.html) -from The New York Times.
Quotes (http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/dna/quotes/olby.htm
l) of Robert Olby on exactly who may have discovered the structure of DNA.
A celebration of Francis Crick's life in science (https://web.archive.org/web/2007021109100
9/http://www.packer34.freeserve.co.uk/rememberingfranciscrickacelebration.htm).
Francis Crick tells his life story (http://www.webofstories.com/play/13844) at Web of Stories
Bretscher M, Lawrence P (August 2004). "Francis Crick 1916–2004" (https://doi.org/10.101
6%2Fj.cub.2004.08.006). Current Biology. 14 (16): R642–5. Bibcode:2004CBio...14.R642B
(https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004CBio...14.R642B). doi:10.1016/j.cub.2004.08.006 (h
ttps://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.cub.2004.08.006). PMID 15324677 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/15324677).
Article by Mark Steyn from The Atlantic in 2004 (https://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200410/ste
yn).
Review of Francis Crick: Hunter of Life's Secrets in Current Biology (https://archive.today/20
120224095640/http://www.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/PAL/NewFiles/PAListFrames.html).

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