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Francis Crick

February 16, 2024

Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS[1][2] (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule.

Francis Crick

OM FRS
Born
Francis Harry Compton Crick

(1916-06-08)8 June 1916
Weston Favell, Northamptonshire, England
Died28 July 2004(2004-07-28) (aged 88)
San Diego, California, US
Alma mater
Occupations
Known for
Spouses
Ruth Doreen Dodd
​
​
(m. 1940; div. 1947)​
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(m. 1949)​
Children3
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
ThesisPolypeptides and proteins: X-ray studies (1954)
Doctoral advisorMax Perutz[5]
Doctoral studentsNone[5]
Websitewww.crick.ac.uk/about-us/francis-crick
Signature

Crick and Watson's paper in Nature in 1953 laid the groundwork for understanding DNA structure and functions. 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".[5][6]

Crick was an important theoretical molecular biologist and played a crucial role in research related to revealing the helical structure of DNA. He is widely known for the use of the term "central dogma" to summarise the idea that once information is transferred from nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) to proteins, it cannot flow back to nucleic acids. In other words, the final step in the flow of information from nucleic acids to proteins is irreversible.[7]

During the remainder of his career, he held the post of J.W. Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. His later research centered on theoretical neurobiology and attempts to advance the scientific study of human consciousness. He remained in this post until his death; "he was editing a manuscript on his death bed, a scientist until the bitter end" according to Christof Koch.[8]

Early life and education edit

Crick was the first son of Harry Crick and Annie Elizabeth Crick (née Wilkins). He was born on 8 June 1916[2] and raised in Weston Favell, then a small village near the English town of Northampton, in which Crick's father and uncle ran the family's boot and shoe factory. His grandfather, Walter Drawbridge Crick, an amateur naturalist, wrote a survey of local foraminifera (single-celled protists with shells), corresponded with Charles Darwin,[9] and had two gastropods (snails or slugs) named after him.

At an early age, Francis was attracted to science and what he could learn about it from books. As a child, he was taken to church by his parents. But by about age 12, he said he did not want to go any more as he preferred a scientific search for answers over religious belief.[10]

Walter Crick, his uncle, lived in a small house on the south side of Abington Avenue; he had a shed at the bottom of his little garden where he taught Crick to blow glass, do chemical experiments and to make photographic prints. When he was eight or nine he transferred to the most junior form of the Northampton Grammar School, on the Billing Road. This was about 1.25 mi (2 km) from his home so he could walk there and back, by Park Avenue South and Abington Park Crescent, but he more often went by bus or, later, by bicycle. The teaching in the higher forms was satisfactory, but not as stimulating. After the age of 14, he was educated at Mill Hill School in London (on a scholarship), where he studied mathematics, physics, and chemistry with his best friend John Shilston. He shared the Walter Knox Prize for Chemistry on Mill Hill School's Foundation Day, Friday, 7 July 1933. He declared that his success was founded on the quality of teaching he received whilst a pupil at Mill Hill.

Crick studied at University College London (UCL), a constituent college of the University of London[11] and earned a Bachelor of Science degree awarded by the University of London in 1937. Crick began a PhD at UCL, but was interrupted by World War II. He later became a PhD student[12] and Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and mainly 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),[5] 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 edit

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[citation needed].

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[citation needed] and not, as erroneously recorded by two authors, at the Admiralty during World War II.

Personal life edit

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[2] 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 edit

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 edit

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 edit

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.[citation needed]

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.

 
Diagram that emphasises the phosphate backbone of DNA. Watson and Crick first made helical models with the phosphates at the centre of the helices.

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 accounts of Franklin's results/photographs of the X-ray images that were included in a written progress report for the King's College laboratory of Sir John Randall from late 1952.

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. Further, 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.

 
Diagrammatic representation of some key structural features of DNA. The similar structures of guanine:cytosine and adenine:thymine base pairs is illustrated. The base pairs are held together by hydrogen bonds. The phosphate backbones are anti-parallel.

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.[citation needed] 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 collaborate with Watson, he would not have found the structure by himself.[49]

Crick did tentatively attempt to perform some experiments on nucleotide base pairing, but he was more of a theoretical biologist than an experimental biologist. There was another near-discovery of the base pairing rules in early 1952. Crick had started to think about interactions between the bases. He asked John Griffith to try 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 and Watson DNA model built in 1953, was reconstructed largely from its original pieces in 1973 and donated to the National Science Museum in London.

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.[55][56] While he almost certainly did use LSD, it is unlikely that he did so as early as 1953.[57]

Molecular biology edit

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.[citation needed]

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".[58]

 
Collagen triple helix.

In 1956, Crick and Watson speculated on the structure of small viruses. They suggested that spherical viruses such as Tomato bushy stunt virus had icosahedral symmetry and were made from 60 identical subunits.[59]

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 collaborations such as one with Alexander Rich on the structure of collagen.[60] However, Crick was quickly drifting away from continued work related to his expertise in the interpretation of X-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.[61] In this article, Crick reviewed the evidence supporting the idea that there was a common set of about 20 amino acids used to synthesize 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.

 
Molecular model of a tRNA molecule.[citation needed] Crick predicted that such adaptor molecules might exist as the links between codons and 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 realization 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.[62] Later that summer, Brenner, Jacob, and Matthew Meselson conducted an experiment which was the first to prove the existence of messenger RNA.[62] 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.[63] 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 one-way:

DNA → RNA → protein

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.[64] The details of the code came mostly from work by Marshall Nirenberg and others who synthesised synthetic RNA molecules and used them as templates for in vitro protein synthesis.[65] 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.[66]

Controversy edit

Use of other researchers' data edit

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][67] 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. She also specified the amount of water to be found in the molecule in accordance with other parts of it, data that have considerable importance in terms of the stability of the molecule. She was the first to discover and formulate these facts, which in fact constituted the basis for all later attempts to build a model of the molecule. Before this, both Linus Pauling and Watson and Crick had generated erroneous models with the chains inside and the bases pointing outwards.[68] Her identification of the space group for DNA crystals revealed to Crick that the two DNA strands were antiparallel.

In January 1953, Watson was shown an X-ray photograph of B-DNA (called photograph 51),[69] by Wilkins.[70][71] Wilkins had been given photograph 51 by Rosalind Franklin's PhD student Raymond Gosling.[70][72] 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.[73]

In the middle of 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.[74][75][76][77]

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 A form manuscripts reached Acta Crystallographica in Copenhagen on 6 March 1953,[78] one day before Crick and Watson had completed their model.[79]

The X-ray diffraction images collected by Gosling and Franklin provided the best evidence for the helical nature of DNA. Franklin's experimental work thus proved crucial in Watson and Crick's discovery. 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.[80] 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. Her identification of the space group for DNA crystals revealed to Crick that the DNA strands were antiparallel, which helped 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,[81] 2) discussions with Wilkins,[82] 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.[83] 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.[84] 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).

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.[85]

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 realise 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.[86] Franklin subsequently did superb work in J. D. Bernal's Lab at Birkbeck College with the tobacco mosaic virus extending ideas on helical construction.[38]

Crick was often described as very talkative, with Watson – in The Double Helix – implying lack of modesty.[87] 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.[88] 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 reearned his position as the heavyweight champ."[89]

Eugenics edit

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.[90] 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 edit

Biologist Nancy Hopkins says when she was an undergraduate in the 1960s, Crick put his hands on her breasts during a lab visit.[91] 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?'"[92]

Views on religion edit

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[93]

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.[94]

Crick once joked, "Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children."[95]

In his book Of Molecules and Men, Crick expressed his views on the relationship between science and religion.[96] 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".[97]

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.[98][99]

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.[100] 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".[100]

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. He might have been imagining substances such as dopamine that are released by the brain under certain conditions and produce rewarding sensations. Crick's suggestion that there might someday be a new science of "biochemical theology" seems to have been realised under an alternative name: there is now the new field of neurotheology.[101] 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?"[102]

In 2003 he was one of 22 Nobel laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.[103]

Creationism edit

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."[104] Crick was also an advocate for the establishment of Darwin Day as a British national holiday.[105]

Directed panspermia edit

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.[106] 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".[107] In a retrospective article,[108] 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.[109] 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.[110]

Neuroscience and other interests edit

 
Results from an fMRI experiment in which people made a conscious decision about a visual stimulus. The small region of the brain coloured orange shows patterns of activity that correlate with the decision making process. Crick stressed the importance of finding new methods to probe human brain function.

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.[citation needed]

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.

According to the University of Cambridge's genetics department official website, the electors of the professorship could not reach consensus, prompting the intervention of then University Vice-Chancellor Lord Adrian. Lord Adrian first offered the professorship to a compromise candidate, Guido Pontecorvo, who refused, and is said to have offered it then to Crick, who also refused.

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."[111] 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.[112][113][114] 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[115] 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.[116]

Awards and honours edit

 
Stained glass window in the dining hall of Caius College, in Cambridge, commemorating Francis Crick and representing the double helical structure of B-DNA.

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,[117] 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.[3]

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),[118] the United States National Academy of Sciences (1969),[119] and the American Philosophical Society (1972).[120]

Francis Crick Medal and Lecture edit

The Francis Crick Medal and Lecture[121] was established in 2003 following an endowment by his former colleague, Sydney Brenner, joint winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.[122] The lecture is delivered 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 edit

The Francis Crick Institute is a £660 million biomedical research centre located in north London, United Kingdom.[123] 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.[124] Completed in 2016, it is the largest centre for biomedical research and innovation in Europe.[123]

Francis Crick Graduate Lectures edit

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.[125][126]

Other honours edit

  • 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.[127]
  • In addition, Crick was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1959,[1][2] 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.[4][128]
  • 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.[129]
  • 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.[130]
  • 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".[131]

Books edit

  • 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 edit

References edit

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  2. ^ a b c d e Bretscher, Mark S.; Mitchison, Graeme (2017). "Francis Harry Compton Crick OM. 8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 63: 159–196. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2017.0010. ISSN 0080-4606.
  3. ^ a b "Francis Crick EMBO profile". people.embo.org. Heidelberg: European Molecular Biology Organization.
  4. ^ a b "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
  5. ^ a b c d Rich, A.; Stevens, C. F. (2004). "Obituary: Francis Crick (1916–2004)". Nature. 430 (7002): 845–847. Bibcode:2004Natur.430..845R. doi:10.1038/430845a. PMID 15318208. S2CID 686071.
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  10. ^ Crick (1990) p. 10: "I remember telling my mother that I no longer wished to go to church".
  11. ^ Crick (1990) Chapters 1 and 2 provide Crick's description of his early life and education
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  14. ^ Olby, Robert (1970). "The Making of Modern Science: Biographical Studies". Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 99 (4): 941.
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  18. ^ Olby, p. ix
  19. ^ Wade, Nicholas (30 July 2004). "Francis Crick, Co-Discoverer of DNA, Dies at 88". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 July 2007. Francis H. C. Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, the genetic blueprint for life, and the leading molecular biologist of his age, died on Wednesday night in a hospital in San Diego. He was 88. He died after a long battle with colon cancer, said Andrew Porterfield, a spokesman for the Salk Institute, where he worked.
  20. ^ . Heritage Auctions. Archived from the original on 17 January 2021. Retrieved 18 June 2023.
  21. ^ a b . the Guardian. Archived from the original on 10 May 2023. Retrieved 16 March 2023.
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  23. ^ Crick (1990) p. 18
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  25. ^ a b Page 30 of The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology by Horace Freeland Judson published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press (1996) ISBN 0-87969-478-5.
  26. ^ Crick (1990) p. 25
  27. ^ "Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg: Anecdotes". Estherlederberg.com.
  28. ^ a b Crick (1990) p. 32
  29. ^ Crick (1990) pp. 33–34
  30. ^ a b Crick (1990) Ch. 4
  31. ^ Crick (1990) p. 46: "there was no alternative but to teach X-ray diffraction to myself."
  32. ^ Pauling L, Corey RB (May 1951). "Atomic Coordinates and Structure Factors for Two Helical Configurations of Polypeptide Chains" (PDF). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 37 (5): 235–40. Bibcode:1951PNAS...37..235P. doi:10.1073/pnas.37.5.235. PMC 1063348. PMID 14834145. (PDF) from the original on 22 September 2017.
  33. ^ Crick (1990) p. 58
  34. ^ Cochran, W.; Crick, F. H.; Vand, V. (1952). "The structure of synthetic polypeptides. I. The transform of atoms on a helix" (PDF). Acta Crystallographica. 5 (5): 581–6. Bibcode:1952AcCry...5..581C. doi:10.1107/S0365110X52001635. (PDF) from the original on 10 October 2008.
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  36. ^ Watson JD, Crick FH (1953). "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid". Nature. 171 (4356): 737–8. Bibcode:1953Natur.171..737W. doi:10.1038/171737a0. PMID 13054692. S2CID 4253007.
  37. ^ Francis Crick's 1962 Biography from the Nobel foundation.
  38. ^ a b c d "James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin". Science History Institute. June 2016. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
  39. ^ Crick (1990) p. 22: Crick traced his interest in the physical nature of the gene back to the start of his work in biology, when he was in the Strangeways laboratory.
  40. ^ In The Eighth Day of Creation, Horace Judson describes the development of Watson's thinking about the physical nature of genes. On page 89, Judson explains that by the time Watson came to Cambridge, he believed genes were made of DNA and he hoped that he could use X-ray diffraction data to determine the structure.
  41. ^ Page 90, In The Eighth Day of Creation by Horace Judson.
  42. ^ a b "Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA: A Documentary History". Special Collections, The Valley Library, Oregon State University.
  43. ^ Chapter 3 in The Eighth Day of Creation by Horace Judson.
  44. ^ Perutz MF, Randall JT, Thomson L, Wilkins MH, Watson JD (June 1969). "DNA helix". Science. 164 (3887): 1537–9. Bibcode:1969Sci...164.1537W. doi:10.1126/science.164.3887.1537. PMID 5796048. S2CID 5263958.
  45. ^ Franklin's citation to the earlier work of W. T. Astbury is in:
    Franklin RE, Gosling RG (1953). "Molecular configuration in sodium thymonucleate" (PDF reprint). Nature. 171 (4356): 740–1. Bibcode:1953Natur.171..740F. doi:10.1038/171740a0. PMID 13054694. S2CID 4268222. (PDF) from the original on 10 June 2004.
  46. ^ Crick F (1974). "The double helix: a personal view". Nature. 248 (5451): 766–9. Bibcode:1974Natur.248..766C. doi:10.1038/248766a0. PMID 4599081. S2CID 4224441.
  47. ^ In chapter 3 of The Eighth Day of Creation, Horace Judson describes the development of Watson's and Crick's thinking about the structure of DNA and how it evolved during their model building. Watson and Crick were open to the idea of tentatively ignoring all individual experimental results, in case they might be wrong or misleading. Judson describes how Watson spent a large amount of time ignoring Crick's belief (based on Franklin's determination of the space group) that the two backbone strands were antiparallel. On page 176, Judson quotes a letter written by Watson, "The model has been derived almost entirely from stereochemical considerations with the only X-ray consideration being the spacing between the pair of bases 3.4 A which was originally found by Astbury."
  48. ^ See Chapter 3 of The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology by Horace Freeland Judson published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press (1996) ISBN 0-87969-478-5. Judson also lists the publications of W. T. Astbury that described his early X-ray diffraction results for DNA.
  49. ^ Crick (1990) p. 75: "If Jim had been killed by a tennis ball, I am reasonably sure I would not have solved the structure alone".
  50. ^ Simon, Matthew (2005) Emergent Computation: emphasizing bioinformatics. Springer. ISBN 0-387-22046-1.
  51. ^ Letter from DNA discoverer to young son to be auctioned 27 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine. MSN. Retrieved 21 November 2013.
  52. ^ My Dear Michael, We've Discovered DNA. Crick's letter transcribed at The New York Times. 26 February 2013
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  54. ^ Olby, Ch. 10, p. 181
  55. ^ Wade, Nicholas (11 July 2006). "A Peek into the Remarkable Mind Behind the Genetic Code". The New York Times.
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  76. ^ Elkin, L.O. (2003)p 44
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  78. ^ Franklin, R.E. and Gosling, R.G. authors of papers received 6 March 1953 Acta Crystallogr. (1953). 6, 673 The Structure of Sodium Thymonucleate Fibres I. The Influence of Water Content Acta Crystallogr. (1953). 6, 678 The Structure of Sodium Thymonucleate Fibres II. The Cylindrically Symmetrical Patterson Function
  79. ^ Maddox, p. 205
  80. ^ Wilkins provides a detailed account of the fact that Franklin's results were interpreted as most likely indicated three, and possibly four, polynucleotide strands in the DNA molecule.
  81. ^ Cullen, Katherine E. (2006). Biology: the people behind the science. New York: Chelsea House. p. 136. ISBN 0-8160-5461-4.
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  87. ^ Watson's book The Double Helix painted a vivid image of Crick, starting with the famous line, "I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood." The first chapter of Horace Judson's book The Eighth Day of Creation describes the importance of Crick's talking and his boldness in his scientific style.
  88. ^ Describing Crick's influence on his scientific colleagues, Francis Crick Papers archivist Chris Beckett wrote of the importance of "Crick's presence and eloquence —direct and beguiling, by all accounts in the archive— at conference after conference, through formal lectures, extempore summaries, informal meetings and individual conversations. Indeed, one has the impression that it was through these frequent persuasive moments of personal delivery and purposive conversations that Crick was most influential."
    Beckett C (2004). "For the Record: The Francis Crick Archive at the Wellcome Library". Med Hist. 48 (2): 245–60. doi:10.1017/S0025727300007419. PMC 546341. PMID 15151106. Also described as an example of Crick's wide recognition and public profile are some of the times Crick was addressed as "Sir Francis Crick" with the assumption that someone so famous must have been knighted.
  89. ^ Eagleman, D.M. (2005). Obituary: Francis H. C. Crick (1916–2004). 26 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine Vision Research. 45: 391–393.
  90. ^ Ridley
  91. ^ Alicia Chen (22 October 2009). "Women in the sciences still struggle, Hopkins says". Brown Daily Herald. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  92. ^ Laura Hoopes (1 April 2011). "Nancy Hopkins' Keynote Speech Shockers". Scitable by Nature Education. Retrieved 17 June 2020.
  93. ^ Crick, Francis (1966). "Why I Am a Humanist". Varsity. Retrieved 15 March 2014 – via Francis Crick Papers: The Wellcome Library.
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  95. ^ McKie, Robin (17 September 2006). "Genius was in his DNA". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 4 August 2007.
  96. ^ Of Molecules and Men (Prometheus Books, 2004; original edition 1967) ISBN 1-59102-185-5. A portion of the book was published as "The Computer, the Eye, the Soul" in Saturday Review (1966): 53–55.
  97. ^ Crick (1990) p. 10: Crick described himself as agnostic, with a "strong inclination towards atheism".
  98. ^ Beckett C (2004). "For the Record: The Francis Crick Archive at the Wellcome Library". Med Hist. 48 (2): 245–60. doi:10.1017/S0025727300007419. PMC 546341. PMID 15151106.
  99. ^ The Daily Telegraph. 20 March 2003.
  100. ^ a b Crick F (November 1970). "Molecular biology in the year 2000" (PDF reprint). Nature. 228 (5272): 613–5. Bibcode:1970Natur.228..613C. doi:10.1038/228613a0. PMID 4920018. S2CID 4190938. (PDF) from the original on 12 September 2005.
  101. ^ Borg J, Andrée B, Soderstrom H, Farde L (November 2003). "The serotonin system and spiritual experiences". Am J Psychiatry. 160 (11): 1965–9. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.160.11.1965. PMID 14594742. S2CID 5911066.
  102. ^ Crick (1990) p. 11
  103. ^ . Humanism and Its Aspirations. American Humanist Association. Archived from the original on 5 October 2012. Retrieved 28 September 2012.
  104. ^ Amicus Curiae Brief of 72 Nobel Laureates, 17 State Academies of Science, and 7 Other Scientific Organization in Support of Appellees filed in the case Edwards v. Aguillard before the U.S. Supreme Court (1986).
  105. ^ Press release from the British Humanist Association: Darwin Day a natural holiday? 26 October 2005 at the Wayback Machine (12 February 2003).
  106. ^ Crick FH (December 1968). "The origin of the genetic code". Journal of Molecular Biology. 38 (3): 367–79. doi:10.1016/0022-2836(68)90392-6. PMID 4887876. S2CID 4144681.
  107. ^ Crick, Francis; Orgel, Leslie E (1973). "Directed Panspermia" (PDF). Icarus. 19 (3): 341–346. Bibcode:1973Icar...19..341C. doi:10.1016/0019-1035(73)90110-3. (PDF) from the original on 12 September 2005. Crick later wrote a book about directed panspermia: Crick, Francis (1981). Life itself: its origin and nature. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-25562-2.
  108. ^ Orgel LE, Crick FH (1993). "Anticipating an RNA world. Some past speculations on the origin of life: where are they today?". The FASEB Journal. 7 (1): 238–9. doi:10.1096/fasebj.7.1.7678564. PMID 7678564. S2CID 11314345.
  109. ^ Crick FH, Brenner S, Klug A, Pieczenik G (December 1976). "A speculation on the origin of protein synthesis". Origins of Life. 7 (4): 389–97. Bibcode:1976OrLi....7..389C. doi:10.1007/BF00927934. PMID 1023138. S2CID 42319222.
  110. ^ Jukes, T. H.; Holmquist, R. (1972). "Evolution of transfer RNA molecules as a repetitive process". Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. 49 (1): 212–216. doi:10.1016/0006-291X(72)90031-9. PMID 4562163.
  111. ^ Crick (1990) p. 145
  112. ^ Mestel, Rosie. "Co-discoverer of DNA's double helix dies". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 20 September 2018.
  113. ^ . University of California. Archived from the original on 16 March 2013. Retrieved 20 September 2018.
  114. ^ "University of California History Digital Archives". lib.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 20 September 2018.
  115. ^ "Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness" by Francis Crick and Christof Koch in Seminars in the Neurosciences (1990): Volume 2 pages 263–275.
  116. ^ Strauss, Bernard S (1 March 2019). "Martynas Yčas: The "Archivist" of the RNA Tie Club". Genetics. 211 (3): 789–795. doi:10.1534/genetics.118.301754. ISSN 1943-2631. PMC 6404253. PMID 30846543.
  117. ^ "Cabinet Office list of honours declined by since deceased persons, 1951–1999" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 April 2012. Retrieved 2 November 2016.
  118. ^ "Francis Harry Compton Crick". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 23 August 2022.
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  123. ^ a b Jha, Alok (19 June 2010). "Plans for largest biomedical research facility in Europe unveiled". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  124. ^ "Three's company: Imperial, King's join UCL in £700m medical project". Times Higher Education. 15 April 2011. Retrieved 16 April 2011.
  125. ^ Back and Forward: From University to Research Institute; From Egg to Adult, and Back Again 3 January 2006 at the Wayback Machine by Professor Sir John Gurdon, Francis Crick Graduate Lectures, 29 November 2005. University of Cambridge.
  126. ^ A Life in Science 3 January 2006 at the Wayback Machine by Dr Tim Hunt, Francis Crick Graduate Lectures, 29 June 2005. University of Cambridge.
  127. ^ . City of Westminster.
  128. ^ "Summit Overview Photo". Awards Council member, theoretical physicist and futurist Dr. Freeman Dyson presenting the American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award to Dr. Francis H.C. Crick, recipient of the Nobel Prize as the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, during the 1987 Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies in Scottsdale, Arizona.
  129. ^ "The Pantheon of Skeptics". CSI. Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. from the original on 31 January 2017. Retrieved 30 April 2017.
  130. ^ "Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences Recipients". American Philosophical Society. Retrieved 27 November 2011.
  131. ^ "The New Elizabethans – Francis Crick". BBC. Retrieved 30 May 2016.

Sources edit

  • Maddox, Brenda (2002). Rosalind Franklin: the dark lady of DNA. 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 edit

  • 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 edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Francis Crick.
 
Wikiquote has quotations related to Francis Crick.
  • The Francis Crick Institute
  • "Francis Harry Compton Crick (1916–2004)" by A. Andrei at the Embryo Project Encyclopedia
  • Francis Crick on Nobelprize.org  
  • Portraits of Francis Crick at the National Portrait Gallery, London  

Crick papers

  • 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
  • Comprehensive list of pdf files of Crick's papers from 1950 to 1990 – National Library of Medicine.
  • Francis Crick papers – Nature.com
  • Key Participants: Francis H. C. Crick – Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA: A Documentary History

Audio and video files

  • An interview with Francis Crick and Christof Koch, 2001 3 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  • The Quest for Consciousness 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 to Francis Crick and James Watson talking on the BBC in 1962, 1972, and 1974.
  • The Impact of Linus Pauling on Molecular Biology – a 1995 talk delivered by Crick at Oregon State University

About his work

  • at the Wellcome Trust.
  • by Professor Robert Olby, Nature 421 (23 January 2003): 402–405.
  • for discovery of DNA story from the National Centre for Biotechnology Education.
  • Papers of Francis Crick, 1953-1969 held at Churchill Archives Centre

About his life

  • Olby's Australian lecture, March 2010
  • on the death of Francis Crick.
  • The Francis Crick Papers – Profiles in Science, National Library of Medicine
  • Obituary in The Times (London) of Francis Crick, 30 July 2004.
  • Francis Crick Obituary The Biochemist

Miscellaneous

  • about Consciousness, 7 June 2006.
  • Siegel RM, Callaway EM (December 2004). "Francis Crick's Legacy for Neuroscience: Between the α and the Ω". PLOS Biology. 2 (12): e419. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0020419. PMC 535570. PMID 17593891.
  • from Time magazine.
  • Francis Crick: Nobel Prize 1962, Physiology or Medicine
  • 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 -from The New York Times.
  • Quotes of Robert Olby on exactly who may have discovered the structure of DNA.
  • .
  • Francis Crick tells his life story at Web of Stories
  • Bretscher M, Lawrence P (August 2004). "Francis Crick 1916–2004". Current Biology. 14 (16): R642–5. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2004.08.006. PMID 15324677.
  • Article by Mark Steyn from The Atlantic in 2004.
  • Review of Francis Crick: Hunter of Life's Secrets in Current Biology.

February 16, 2024
francis, crick, francis, harry, compton, crick, june, 1916, july, 2004, english, molecular, biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist, james, watson, rosalind, franklin, maurice, wilkins, played, crucial, roles, deciphering, helical, structure, molecule, frsborn. Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS 1 2 8 June 1916 28 July 2004 was an English molecular biologist biophysicist and neuroscientist He James Watson Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule Francis CrickOM FRSBornFrancis Harry Compton Crick 1916 06 08 8 June 1916Weston Favell Northamptonshire EnglandDied28 July 2004 2004 07 28 aged 88 San Diego California USAlma materUniversity College London University of London BSc University of Cambridge PhD OccupationsMolecular biologistbiophysicistneuroscientistKnown forDNA structure Central dogma Consciousness Adaptor hypothesisSpousesRuth Doreen Dodd m 1940 div 1947 wbr Odile Speed m 1949 wbr Children3AwardsFRS 1959 1 2 Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research 1960 Gairdner Foundation International Award 1962 Nobel Prize 1962 EMBO Membership 1964 3 Mendel Medal 1966 Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences 1969 Royal Medal 1972 Copley Medal 1975 Sir Hans Krebs Medal 1977 Albert Medal 1987 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement 4 1987 Order of Merit 1991 Scientific careerFieldsPhysics Molecular biologyInstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge University College London Cavendish Laboratory Laboratory of Molecular Biology Salk Institute for Biological StudiesThesisPolypeptides and proteins X ray studies 1954 Doctoral advisorMax Perutz 5 Doctoral studentsNone 5 Websitewww wbr crick wbr ac wbr uk wbr about us wbr francis crickSignatureCrick and Watson s paper in Nature in 1953 laid the groundwork for understanding DNA structure and functions 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 5 6 Crick was an important theoretical molecular biologist and played a crucial role in research related to revealing the helical structure of DNA He is widely known for the use of the term central dogma to summarise the idea that once information is transferred from nucleic acids DNA or RNA to proteins it cannot flow back to nucleic acids In other words the final step in the flow of information from nucleic acids to proteins is irreversible 7 During the remainder of his career he held the post of J W Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla California His later research centered on theoretical neurobiology and attempts to advance the scientific study of human consciousness He remained in this post until his death he was editing a manuscript on his death bed a scientist until the bitter end according to Christof Koch 8 Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Post World War Two life and work 3 Personal life 4 Research 4 1 1949 1950 4 2 1951 1953 DNA structure 4 3 Molecular biology 5 Controversy 5 1 Use of other researchers data 5 2 Eugenics 5 3 Sexual harassment 6 Views on religion 6 1 Creationism 7 Directed panspermia 8 Neuroscience and other interests 9 Awards and honours 9 1 Francis Crick Medal and Lecture 9 2 Francis Crick Institute 9 3 Francis Crick Graduate Lectures 9 4 Other honours 10 Books 11 See also 12 References 13 Sources 14 Further reading 15 External linksEarly life and education editCrick was the first son of Harry Crick and Annie Elizabeth Crick nee Wilkins He was born on 8 June 1916 2 and raised in Weston Favell then a small village near the English town of Northampton in which Crick s father and uncle ran the family s boot and shoe factory His grandfather Walter Drawbridge Crick an amateur naturalist wrote a survey of local foraminifera single celled protists with shells corresponded with Charles Darwin 9 and had two gastropods snails or slugs named after him At an early age Francis was attracted to science and what he could learn about it from books As a child he was taken to church by his parents But by about age 12 he said he did not want to go any more as he preferred a scientific search for answers over religious belief 10 Walter Crick his uncle lived in a small house on the south side of Abington Avenue he had a shed at the bottom of his little garden where he taught Crick to blow glass do chemical experiments and to make photographic prints When he was eight or nine he transferred to the most junior form of the Northampton Grammar School on the Billing Road This was about 1 25 mi 2 km from his home so he could walk there and back by Park Avenue South and Abington Park Crescent but he more often went by bus or later by bicycle The teaching in the higher forms was satisfactory but not as stimulating After the age of 14 he was educated at Mill Hill School in London on a scholarship where he studied mathematics physics and chemistry with his best friend John Shilston He shared the Walter Knox Prize for Chemistry on Mill Hill School s Foundation Day Friday 7 July 1933 He declared that his success was founded on the quality of teaching he received whilst a pupil at Mill Hill Crick studied at University College London UCL a constituent college of the University of London 11 and earned a Bachelor of Science degree awarded by the University of London in 1937 Crick began a PhD at UCL but was interrupted by World War II He later became a PhD student 12 and Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge and mainly 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 5 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 editIn 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 citation needed 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 citation needed and not as erroneously recorded by two authors at the Admiralty during World War II Personal life editCrick married twice and fathered three children his brother Anthony born in 1918 predeceased him in 1966 18 Spouses Ruth Doreen Crick nee Dodd m 18 February 1940 8 May 1947 became Mrs James Stewart Potter Odile Crick nee 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 2 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 editCrick 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 Schrodinger 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 edit 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 edit 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 citation needed 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 nbsp Diagram that emphasises the phosphate backbone of DNA Watson and Crick first made helical models with the phosphates at the centre of the helices 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 accounts of Franklin s results photographs of the X ray images that were included in a written progress report for the King s College laboratory of Sir John Randall from late 1952 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 Further 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 angstrom 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 angstroms 2 7 nm in the compact A form 34 angstroms 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 nbsp Diagrammatic representation of some key structural features of DNA The similar structures of guanine cytosine and adenine thymine base pairs is illustrated The base pairs are held together by hydrogen bonds The phosphate backbones are anti parallel 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 citation needed 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 a 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 collaborate with Watson he would not have found the structure by himself 49 Crick did tentatively attempt to perform some experiments on nucleotide base pairing but he was more of a theoretical biologist than an experimental biologist There was another near discovery of the base pairing rules in early 1952 Crick had started to think about interactions between the bases He asked John Griffith to try 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 nbsp Crick and Watson DNA model built in 1953 was reconstructed largely from its original pieces in 1973 and donated to the National Science Museum in London 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 55 56 While he almost certainly did use LSD it is unlikely that he did so as early as 1953 57 Molecular biology edit 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 citation needed 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 58 nbsp Collagen triple helix In 1956 Crick and Watson speculated on the structure of small viruses They suggested that spherical viruses such as Tomato bushy stunt virus had icosahedral symmetry and were made from 60 identical subunits 59 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 collaborations such as one with Alexander Rich on the structure of collagen 60 However Crick was quickly drifting away from continued work related to his expertise in the interpretation of X 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 61 In this article Crick reviewed the evidence supporting the idea that there was a common set of about 20 amino acids used to synthesize 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 nbsp Molecular model of a tRNA molecule citation needed Crick predicted that such adaptor molecules might exist as the links between codons and 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 RNAThe adaptor molecules were eventually shown to be tRNAs and the catalytic ribonucleic protein complexes became known as ribosomes An important step was the realization by Crick and Brenner on 15 April 1960 during a conversation with Francois Jacob that messenger RNA was not the same thing as ribosomal RNA 62 Later that summer Brenner Jacob and Matthew Meselson conducted an experiment which was the first to prove the existence of messenger RNA 62 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 63 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 one way DNA RNA proteinSome 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 64 The details of the code came mostly from work by Marshall Nirenberg and others who synthesised synthetic RNA molecules and used them as templates for in vitro protein synthesis 65 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 66 Controversy editUse of other researchers data edit The neutrality of this article is disputed Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page Please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met November 2015 Learn how and when to remove this template message 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 67 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 She also specified the amount of water to be found in the molecule in accordance with other parts of it data that have considerable importance in terms of the stability of the molecule She was the first to discover and formulate these facts which in fact constituted the basis for all later attempts to build a model of the molecule Before this both Linus Pauling and Watson and Crick had generated erroneous models with the chains inside and the bases pointing outwards 68 Her identification of the space group for DNA crystals revealed to Crick that the two DNA strands were antiparallel In January 1953 Watson was shown an X ray photograph of B DNA called photograph 51 69 by Wilkins 70 71 Wilkins had been given photograph 51 by Rosalind Franklin s PhD student Raymond Gosling 70 72 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 73 In the middle of 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 74 75 76 77 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 A form manuscripts reached Acta Crystallographica in Copenhagen on 6 March 1953 78 one day before Crick and Watson had completed their model 79 The X ray diffraction images collected by Gosling and Franklin provided the best evidence for the helical nature of DNA Franklin s experimental work thus proved crucial in Watson and Crick s discovery 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 80 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 Her identification of the space group for DNA crystals revealed to Crick that the DNA strands were antiparallel which helped 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 81 2 discussions with Wilkins 82 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 83 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 84 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 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 85 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 realise 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 86 Franklin subsequently did superb work in J D Bernal s Lab at Birkbeck College with the tobacco mosaic virus extending ideas on helical construction 38 Crick was often described as very talkative with Watson in The Double Helix implying lack of modesty 87 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 88 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 reearned his position as the heavyweight champ 89 Eugenics edit 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 90 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 edit Biologist Nancy Hopkins says when she was an undergraduate in the 1960s Crick put his hands on her breasts during a lab visit 91 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 92 Views on religion editCrick 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 93 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 94 Crick once joked Christianity may be OK between consenting adults in private but should not be taught to young children 95 In his book Of Molecules and Men Crick expressed his views on the relationship between science and religion 96 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 97 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 98 99 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 100 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 100 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 He might have been imagining substances such as dopamine that are released by the brain under certain conditions and produce rewarding sensations Crick s suggestion that there might someday be a new science of biochemical theology seems to have been realised under an alternative name there is now the new field of neurotheology 101 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 102 In 2003 he was one of 22 Nobel laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto 103 Creationism edit 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 104 Crick was also an advocate for the establishment of Darwin Day as a British national holiday 105 Directed panspermia editDuring 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 106 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 107 In a retrospective article 108 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 109 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 110 Neuroscience and other interests edit nbsp Results from an fMRI experiment in which people made a conscious decision about a visual stimulus The small region of the brain coloured orange shows patterns of activity that correlate with the decision making process Crick stressed the importance of finding new methods to probe human brain function 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 citation needed 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 According to the University of Cambridge s genetics department official website the electors of the professorship could not reach consensus prompting the intervention of then University Vice Chancellor Lord Adrian Lord Adrian first offered the professorship to a compromise candidate Guido Pontecorvo who refused and is said to have offered it then to Crick who also refused 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 111 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 112 113 114 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 neurobiologistsCrick 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 115 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 Ycas 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 116 Awards and honours edit nbsp Stained glass window in the dining hall of Caius College in Cambridge commemorating Francis Crick and representing the double helical structure of B DNA 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 117 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 3 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 118 the United States National Academy of Sciences 1969 119 and the American Philosophical Society 1972 120 Francis Crick Medal and Lecture edit The Francis Crick Medal and Lecture 121 was established in 2003 following an endowment by his former colleague Sydney Brenner joint winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine 122 The lecture is delivered 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 update 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 edit The Francis Crick Institute is a 660 million biomedical research centre located in north London United Kingdom 123 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 124 Completed in 2016 it is the largest centre for biomedical research and innovation in Europe 123 Francis Crick Graduate Lectures edit 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 125 126 Other honours edit 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 facade 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 127 In addition Crick was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society FRS in 1959 1 2 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 4 128 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 129 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 130 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 131 Books editOf Molecules and Men Prometheus Books 2004 original edition 1967 ISBN 1 59102 185 5 Life Itself Its Origin and Nature Simon amp 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 XSee also editCrick 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 consciousnessReferences edit a b c Anon 2015 Fellowship of the Royal Society 1660 2015 London Royal Society Archived from the original on 15 October 2015 a b c d e Bretscher Mark S Mitchison Graeme 2017 Francis Harry Compton Crick OM 8 June 1916 28 July 2004 Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 63 159 196 doi 10 1098 rsbm 2017 0010 ISSN 0080 4606 a b Francis Crick EMBO profile people embo org Heidelberg European Molecular Biology Organization a b Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement www achievement org American Academy of Achievement a b c d Rich A Stevens C F 2004 Obituary Francis Crick 1916 2004 Nature 430 7002 845 847 Bibcode 2004Natur 430 845R doi 10 1038 430845a PMID 15318208 S2CID 686071 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962 Nobel Prize Site for Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962 a b Crick FH 1958 On protein synthesis PDF reprint Symp Soc Exp Biol 12 138 63 PMID 13580867 Archived PDF from the original on 12 September 2005 Shermer Michael 30 July 2004 Astonishing Mind Francis Crick 1916 2004 Skeptics Society Retrieved 25 August 2006 Darwin Charles 1882 On the Dispersal of Freshwater Bivalves Nature 25 649 529 30 Bibcode 1882Natur 25R 529D doi 10 1038 025529f0 Crick 1990 p 10 I remember telling my mother that I no longer wished to go to church Crick 1990 Chapters 1 and 2 provide Crick s description of his early life and education Crick Francis Harry Compton 1954 Polypeptides and proteins X ray studies PhD thesis University of Cambridge OCLC 879394484 EThOS uk bl ethos 598146 Crick 1990 p 13 Olby Robert 1970 The Making of Modern Science Biographical Studies Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 99 4 941 White Michael 3 October 2009 Francis Crick as Late Bloomer Science 2 0 ION Publications LLC Retrieved 11 January 2017 Cruise A M 11 February 2004 Sir Robert Boyd The Guardian ISSN 0261 3077 Retrieved 8 October 2023 Bio at Wellcome Trust Genome wellcome ac uk Archived from the original on 26 April 2007 Olby p ix Wade Nicholas 30 July 2004 Francis Crick Co Discoverer of DNA Dies at 88 The New York Times Retrieved 21 July 2007 Francis H C Crick co discoverer of the structure of DNA the genetic blueprint for life and the leading molecular biologist of his age died on Wednesday night in a hospital in San Diego He was 88 He died after a long battle with colon cancer said Andrew Porterfield a spokesman for the Salk Institute where he worked Francis Crick s Nobel Prize Brings 2 27 Million To Lead 4 97 Million Manuscripts And Rare Book Event Heritage Auctions Archived from the original on 17 January 2021 Retrieved 18 June 2023 a b Francis Crick s Nobel prize medal sells for over 1 3m the Guardian Archived from the original on 10 May 2023 Retrieved 16 March 2023 Crick 1990 p 17 Crick 1990 p 18 a b Crick 1990 p 22 a b Page 30 of The Eighth Day of Creation Makers of the Revolution in Biology by Horace Freeland Judson published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 1996 ISBN 0 87969 478 5 Crick 1990 p 25 Esther M Zimmer Lederberg Anecdotes Estherlederberg com a b Crick 1990 p 32 Crick 1990 pp 33 34 a b Crick 1990 Ch 4 Crick 1990 p 46 there was no alternative but to teach X ray diffraction to myself Pauling L Corey RB May 1951 Atomic Coordinates and Structure Factors for Two Helical Configurations of Polypeptide Chains PDF Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 37 5 235 40 Bibcode 1951PNAS 37 235P doi 10 1073 pnas 37 5 235 PMC 1063348 PMID 14834145 Archived PDF from the original on 22 September 2017 Crick 1990 p 58 Cochran W Crick F H Vand V 1952 The structure of synthetic polypeptides I The transform of atoms on a helix PDF Acta Crystallographica 5 5 581 6 Bibcode 1952AcCry 5 581C doi 10 1107 S0365110X52001635 Archived PDF from the original on 10 October 2008 Cochran W Crick F H C 1952 Evidence for the Pauling Corey a Helix in Synthetic Polypeptides Nature 169 4293 234 235 Bibcode 1952Natur 169 234C doi 10 1038 169234a0 S2CID 4182175 Watson JD Crick FH 1953 Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid Nature 171 4356 737 8 Bibcode 1953Natur 171 737W doi 10 1038 171737a0 PMID 13054692 S2CID 4253007 Francis Crick s 1962 Biography from the Nobel foundation a b c d James Watson Francis Crick Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin Science History Institute June 2016 Retrieved 20 March 2018 Crick 1990 p 22 Crick traced his interest in the physical nature of the gene back to the start of his work in biology when he was in the Strangeways laboratory In The Eighth Day of Creation Horace Judson describes the development of Watson s thinking about the physical nature of genes On page 89 Judson explains that by the time Watson came to Cambridge he believed genes were made of DNA and he hoped that he could use X ray diffraction data to determine the structure Page 90 In The Eighth Day of Creation by Horace Judson a b Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA A Documentary History Special Collections The Valley Library Oregon State University Chapter 3 in The Eighth Day of Creation by Horace Judson Perutz MF Randall JT Thomson L Wilkins MH Watson JD June 1969 DNA helix Science 164 3887 1537 9 Bibcode 1969Sci 164 1537W doi 10 1126 science 164 3887 1537 PMID 5796048 S2CID 5263958 Franklin s citation to the earlier work of W T Astbury is in Franklin RE Gosling RG 1953 Molecular configuration in sodium thymonucleate PDF reprint Nature 171 4356 740 1 Bibcode 1953Natur 171 740F doi 10 1038 171740a0 PMID 13054694 S2CID 4268222 Archived PDF from the original on 10 June 2004 Crick F 1974 The double helix a personal view Nature 248 5451 766 9 Bibcode 1974Natur 248 766C doi 10 1038 248766a0 PMID 4599081 S2CID 4224441 In chapter 3 of The Eighth Day of Creation Horace Judson describes the development of Watson s and Crick s thinking about the structure of DNA and how it evolved during their model building Watson and Crick were open to the idea of tentatively ignoring all individual experimental results in case they might be wrong or misleading Judson describes how Watson spent a large amount of time ignoring Crick s belief based on Franklin s determination of the space group that the two backbone strands were antiparallel On page 176 Judson quotes a letter written by Watson The model has been derived almost entirely from stereochemical considerations with the only X ray consideration being the spacing between the pair of bases 3 4 A which was originally found by Astbury See Chapter 3 of The Eighth Day of Creation Makers of the Revolution in Biology by Horace Freeland Judson published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 1996 ISBN 0 87969 478 5 Judson also lists the publications of W T Astbury that described his early X ray diffraction results for DNA Crick 1990 p 75 If Jim had been killed by a tennis ball I am reasonably sure I would not have solved the structure alone Simon Matthew 2005 Emergent Computation emphasizing bioinformatics Springer ISBN 0 387 22046 1 Letter from DNA discoverer to young son to be auctioned Archived 27 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine MSN Retrieved 21 November 2013 My Dear Michael We ve Discovered DNA Crick s letter transcribed at The New York Times 26 February 2013 The Secret of Life Letter to Be Sold at Christie s On April 10 Remarkable Letter from Francis Crick to His Son Outlining the Revolutionary Discovery of the Structure and Function of DNA Estimate 1 2 million Christie s New York Rockefeller Center 26 February 2013 Olby Ch 10 p 181 Wade Nicholas 11 July 2006 A Peek into the Remarkable Mind Behind the Genetic Code The New York Times Nobel Prize genius Crick was high on LSD mayanmajix com Francis Crick DNA amp LSD Reality Sandwich realitysandwich com 4 May 2015 Watson JD Crick FH May 1953 Genetical implications of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid PDF reprint Nature 171 4361 964 7 Bibcode 1953Natur 171 964W doi 10 1038 171964b0 PMID 13063483 S2CID 4256010 Archived PDF from the original on 12 September 2005 Morgan GJ February 2003 Historical review viruses crystals and geodesic domes Trends in Biochemical Sciences 28 2 86 90 doi 10 1016 S0968 0004 02 00007 5 PMID 12575996 Rich A Crick FH November 1955 The structure of collagen PDF reprint Nature 176 4489 915 6 Bibcode 1955Natur 176 915R doi 10 1038 176915a0 PMID 13272717 S2CID 9611917 Archived PDF from the original on 12 September 2005 On Degenerate Templates and the Adaptor Hypothesis A Note for the RNA Tie Club by Francis Crick 1956 a b Cobb M 29 June 2015 Who discovered messenger RNA Current Biology 25 13 R526 R532 doi 10 1016 j cub 2015 05 032 PMID 26126273 Hayes Brian 1998 The Invention of the Genetic Code American Scientist 86 8 doi 10 1511 1998 17 3338 S2CID 121907709 Retrieved 11 January 2017 Crick FH Barnett L Brenner S Watts Tobin RJ December 1961 General nature of the genetic code for proteins PDF reprint Nature 192 4809 1227 32 Bibcode 1961Natur 192 1227C doi 10 1038 1921227a0 PMID 13882203 S2CID 4276146 Archived PDF from the original on 12 September 2005 Crick FH 1967 The Croonian lecture 1966 The genetic code PDF reprint Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 167 9 331 47 Bibcode 1967RSPSB 167 331C doi 10 1098 rspb 1967 0031 PMID 4382798 S2CID 11131727 Archived PDF from the original on 12 September 2005 Goldstein Bob 30 May 2019 The Thrill of Defeat What Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner taught me about being scooped Nautilus Archived from the original on 10 December 2021 Retrieved 21 January 2021 Judson H F 1996 The Eighth Day of Creation Makers of the Revolution in Biology Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press chapter 3 ISBN 0 87969 478 5 Schwartz James 2008 In Pursuit of the Gene From Darwin to DNA Harvard University Press ISBN 0674034910 Maddox pp 177 178 a b Maddox p 196 Crick 1990 p 67 Wilkins p 198 Sayre Olby Maddox Elkin Wilkins Hubbard Ruth 1990 The Politics of Women s Biology Rutgers State University p 60 ISBN 0 8135 1490 8 Chapter 3 of The Eighth Day of Creation Makers of the Revolution in Biology by Horace Freeland Judson published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 1996 ISBN 0 87969 478 5 Elkin L O 2003 p 44 Maddox pp 198 199 Franklin R E and Gosling R G authors of papers received 6 March 1953 Acta Crystallogr 1953 6 673 The Structure of Sodium Thymonucleate Fibres I The Influence of Water Content Acta Crystallogr 1953 6 678 The Structure of Sodium Thymonucleate Fibres II The Cylindrically Symmetrical Patterson Function Maddox p 205 Wilkins provides a detailed account of the fact that Franklin s results were interpreted as most likely indicated three and possibly four polynucleotide strands in the DNA molecule Cullen Katherine E 2006 Biology the people behind the science New York Chelsea House p 136 ISBN 0 8160 5461 4 Cullen Katherine E 2006 Biology the people behind the science New York Chelsea House p 140 ISBN 0 8160 5461 4 Stocklmayer Susan M Gore Michael M Brtyant Chris 2001 Science Communication in Theory and Practice Kluwer Academic Publishers p 79 ISBN 1 4020 0131 2 Maddox Elkin L O 2003 Rosalind Franklin and the Double Helix Physics Today 56 3 42 48 Bibcode 2003PhT 56c 42E doi 10 1063 1 1570771 Maddox p 312 Watson s book The Double Helix painted a vivid image of Crick starting with the famous line I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood The first chapter of Horace Judson s book The Eighth Day of Creation describes the importance of Crick s talking and his boldness in his scientific style Describing Crick s influence on his scientific colleagues Francis Crick Papers archivist Chris Beckett wrote of the importance of Crick s presence and eloquence direct and beguiling by all accounts in the archive at conference after conference through formal lectures extempore summaries informal meetings and individual conversations Indeed one has the impression that it was through these frequent persuasive moments of personal delivery and purposive conversations that Crick was most influential Beckett C 2004 For the Record The Francis Crick Archive at the Wellcome Library Med Hist 48 2 245 60 doi 10 1017 S0025727300007419 PMC 546341 PMID 15151106 Also described as an example of Crick s wide recognition and public profile are some of the times Crick was addressed as Sir Francis Crick with the assumption that someone so famous must have been knighted Eagleman D M 2005 Obituary Francis H C Crick 1916 2004 Archived 26 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine Vision Research 45 391 393 Ridley Alicia Chen 22 October 2009 Women in the sciences still struggle Hopkins says Brown Daily Herald Retrieved 17 June 2020 Laura Hoopes 1 April 2011 Nancy Hopkins Keynote Speech Shockers Scitable by Nature Education Retrieved 17 June 2020 Crick Francis 1966 Why I Am a Humanist Varsity Retrieved 15 March 2014 via Francis Crick Papers The Wellcome Library Crick Francis 1966 Letter to the Editor Varsity the University of Cambridge newspaper 1966 Francis Crick Papers The Wellcome Library Retrieved 15 March 2014 McKie Robin 17 September 2006 Genius was in his DNA The Guardian London Retrieved 4 August 2007 Of Molecules and Men Prometheus Books 2004 original edition 1967 ISBN 1 59102 185 5 A portion of the book was published as The Computer the Eye the Soul in Saturday Review 1966 53 55 Crick 1990 p 10 Crick described himself as agnostic with a strong inclination towards atheism Beckett C 2004 For the Record The Francis Crick Archive at the Wellcome Library Med Hist 48 2 245 60 doi 10 1017 S0025727300007419 PMC 546341 PMID 15151106 Do our genes reveal the hand of God The Daily Telegraph 20 March 2003 a b Crick F November 1970 Molecular biology in the year 2000 PDF reprint Nature 228 5272 613 5 Bibcode 1970Natur 228 613C doi 10 1038 228613a0 PMID 4920018 S2CID 4190938 Archived PDF from the original on 12 September 2005 Borg J Andree B Soderstrom H Farde L November 2003 The serotonin system and spiritual experiences Am J Psychiatry 160 11 1965 9 doi 10 1176 appi ajp 160 11 1965 PMID 14594742 S2CID 5911066 Crick 1990 p 11 Notable Signers Humanism and Its Aspirations American Humanist Association Archived from the original on 5 October 2012 Retrieved 28 September 2012 Amicus Curiae Brief of 72 Nobel Laureates 17 State Academies of Science and 7 Other Scientific Organization in Support of Appellees filed in the case Edwards v Aguillard before the U S Supreme Court 1986 Press release from the British Humanist Association Darwin Day a natural holiday Archived 26 October 2005 at the Wayback Machine 12 February 2003 Crick FH December 1968 The origin of the genetic code Journal of Molecular Biology 38 3 367 79 doi 10 1016 0022 2836 68 90392 6 PMID 4887876 S2CID 4144681 Crick Francis Orgel Leslie E 1973 Directed Panspermia PDF Icarus 19 3 341 346 Bibcode 1973Icar 19 341C doi 10 1016 0019 1035 73 90110 3 Archived PDF from the original on 12 September 2005 Crick later wrote a book about directed panspermia Crick Francis 1981 Life itself its origin and nature New York Simon and Schuster ISBN 0 671 25562 2 Orgel LE Crick FH 1993 Anticipating an RNA world Some past speculations on the origin of life where are they today The FASEB Journal 7 1 238 9 doi 10 1096 fasebj 7 1 7678564 PMID 7678564 S2CID 11314345 Crick FH Brenner S Klug A Pieczenik G December 1976 A speculation on the origin of protein synthesis Origins of Life 7 4 389 97 Bibcode 1976OrLi 7 389C doi 10 1007 BF00927934 PMID 1023138 S2CID 42319222 Jukes T H Holmquist R 1972 Evolution of transfer RNA molecules as a repetitive process Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications 49 1 212 216 doi 10 1016 0006 291X 72 90031 9 PMID 4562163 Crick 1990 p 145 Mestel Rosie Co discoverer of DNA s double helix dies Chicago Tribune Retrieved 20 September 2018 Nobel Laureates University of California Archived from the original on 16 March 2013 Retrieved 20 September 2018 University of California History Digital Archives lib berkeley edu Retrieved 20 September 2018 Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness by Francis Crick and Christof Koch in Seminars in the Neurosciences 1990 Volume 2 pages 263 275 Strauss Bernard S 1 March 2019 Martynas Ycas The Archivist of the RNA Tie Club Genetics 211 3 789 795 doi 10 1534 genetics 118 301754 ISSN 1943 2631 PMC 6404253 PMID 30846543 Cabinet Office list of honours declined by since deceased persons 1951 1999 PDF Archived from the original PDF on 4 April 2012 Retrieved 2 November 2016 Francis Harry Compton Crick American Academy of Arts amp Sciences Retrieved 23 August 2022 Francis Crick www nasonline org Retrieved 23 August 2022 APS Member History search amphilsoc org Retrieved 23 August 2022 Francis Crick Medal and Lecture This prize lecture is given on a subject in the field of biology London Royal Society Archived from the original on 11 February 2015 The Francis Crick Lecture 2003 Archived 12 November 2007 at the Wayback Machine The Royal Society website Retrieved 12 July 2006 a b Jha Alok 19 June 2010 Plans for largest biomedical research facility in Europe unveiled The Guardian London Retrieved 11 August 2010 Three s company Imperial King s join UCL in 700m medical project Times Higher Education 15 April 2011 Retrieved 16 April 2011 Back and Forward From University to Research Institute From Egg to Adult and Back Again Archived 3 January 2006 at the Wayback Machine by Professor Sir John Gurdon Francis Crick Graduate Lectures 29 November 2005 University of Cambridge A Life in Science Archived 3 January 2006 at the Wayback Machine by Dr Tim Hunt Francis Crick Graduate Lectures 29 June 2005 University of Cambridge Westminster honours Francis Crick 20 06 2007 City of Westminster Summit Overview Photo Awards Council member theoretical physicist and futurist Dr Freeman Dyson presenting the American Academy of Achievement s Golden Plate Award to Dr Francis H C Crick recipient of the Nobel Prize as the co discoverer of the structure of DNA during the 1987 Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies in Scottsdale Arizona The Pantheon of Skeptics CSI Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Archived from the original on 31 January 2017 Retrieved 30 April 2017 Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences Recipients American Philosophical Society Retrieved 27 November 2011 The New Elizabethans Francis Crick BBC Retrieved 30 May 2016 Sources editMaddox Brenda 2002 Rosalind Franklin the dark lady of DNA 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 editJohn 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 amp 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 amp 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 edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Francis Crick nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to Francis Crick The Francis Crick Institute Francis Harry Compton Crick 1916 2004 by A Andrei at the Embryo Project Encyclopedia Francis Crick on Nobelprize org nbsp Portraits of Francis Crick at the National Portrait Gallery London nbsp Crick papers Register of Francis Crick Personal Papers MSS 660 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 Comprehensive list of pdf files of Crick s papers from 1950 to 1990 National Library of Medicine Francis Crick papers Nature com Key Participants Francis H C Crick Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA A Documentary HistoryAudio and video files An interview with Francis Crick and Christof Koch 2001 Archived 3 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine Listen to Francis Crick The Quest for Consciousness Archived 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 to Francis Crick and James Watson talking on the BBC in 1962 1972 and 1974 The Impact of Linus Pauling on Molecular Biology a 1995 talk delivered by Crick at Oregon State UniversityAbout his work The Crick Papers at the Wellcome Trust Quiet debut for the double helix by Professor Robert Olby Nature 421 23 January 2003 402 405 Reading list for discovery of DNA story from the National Centre for Biotechnology Education Papers of Francis Crick 1953 1969 held at Churchill Archives CentreAbout his life Olby s Australian lecture March 2010 Salk Institute Press Release on the death of Francis Crick The Francis Crick Papers Profiles in Science National Library of Medicine Obituary in The Times London of Francis Crick 30 July 2004 Francis Crick Obituary The BiochemistMiscellaneous National DNA Day 25 April 2006 Moderated Chat Transcript Archive Independent On Line article about Consciousness 7 June 2006 Siegel RM Callaway EM December 2004 Francis Crick s Legacy for Neuroscience Between the a and the W PLOS Biology 2 12 e419 doi 10 1371 journal pbio 0020419 PMC 535570 PMID 17593891 100 Scientists and Thinkers James Watson and Francis Crick from Time magazine Francis Crick Nobel Prize 1962 Physiology or Medicine First press stories on DNA 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 from The New York Times Quotes of Robert Olby on exactly who may have discovered the structure of DNA A celebration of Francis Crick s life in science Francis Crick tells his life story at Web of Stories Bretscher M Lawrence P August 2004 Francis Crick 1916 2004 Current Biology 14 16 R642 5 doi 10 1016 j cub 2004 08 006 PMID 15324677 Article by Mark Steyn from The Atlantic in 2004 Review of Francis Crick Hunter of Life s Secrets in Current Biology Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Francis Crick amp oldid 1206652183, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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