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Francis Crick

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   CAPTION: Francis Crick

   Francis Harry Compton Crick
   Francis Harry Compton Crick
         Born        8 June 1916
                     Weston Favell, Northants., UK
         Died        28 July 2004
                     San Diego, California, USA
       Residence     UK, USA
      Nationality    English
         Field       Biophysicist
      Institution    Salk Institute
      Alma Mater     University College London
                     University of Cambridge
   Doctoral Advisor  Max Perutz
   Doctoral Students None
       Known for     DNA structure, consciousness
    Notable Prizes   Nobel Prize (1962)

   Francis Harry Compton Crick OM ( 8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an
   English physicist, molecular biologist and neuroscientist, most noted
   for being one of the co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA
   molecule in 1953. He, James D. Watson, and Maurice Wilkins were jointly
   awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for their
   discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its
   significance for information transfer in living material". His later
   work at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology until 1977 has not
   received as much formal recognition. His remaining career as the J.W.
   Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute for
   Biological Studies was spent in La Jolla, California, until his death;
   "He was editing a manuscript on his death bed, a scientist until the
   bitter end" (a quote from his close associate Christof Koch).

Biography, family and education

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

   Francis Crick was born, the firstson of Harry and Alex Elisabeth Crick
   (nee Wilkins), and raised in Weston Favell a small village near the
   English town of Northampton where Crick’s father and uncle ran the
   family’s boot and shoe factory. At an early age he was attracted to
   science and what he could learn about it from books. As a child he was
   taken to church ( Congregationalist) by his parents, but by about age
   12 he told his mother that he no longer wanted to attend. Crick
   preferred the scientific search for answers over belief in any dogma.
   He was educated at Northampton Grammar School (now Northampton School
   For Boys) and, after the age of 14, Mill Hill School in London (on
   scholarship) where he studied mathematics, physics and chemistry. At
   the age of 21, Crick earned a B.Sc. degree in physics from University
   College London (UCL). Unfortunately, he had failed to gain a place at a
   Cambridge college as he wanted to, probably through falling foul of
   their requirement for Latin; his contemporaries in British DNA research
   Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins both went up to Cambridge
   colleges, to Newnham and St. John's respectively.

   Crick began a Ph.D. research project on measuring viscosity of water at
   high temperatures (what he later described as "the dullest problem
   imaginable") in the laboratory of physicist Edward Neville da Costa
   Andrade, but with the outbreak of World War II, Crick was deflected
   from a possible career in physics.

   During World War II, he worked for the Admiralty Mining Establishment,
   from which emerged a group of many notable scientists; he worked on the
   design of magnetic and acoustic mines and was instrumental in designing
   a new mine that was effective against German minesweepers.

   After the war's end, Crick began studying biology in 1947 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 John Randall, who had helped win the war with
   inventions like radar. Crick had to adjust from the "elegance and deep
   simplicity" of physics to the "elaborate chemical mechanisms that
   natural selection had]] at Cambridge was under the general direction of
   Sir Lawrence Bragg, a Nobel Prize winner at the age of 25 in 1915;
   Bragg was influential on the determination of DNA's structure to beat
   the leading American chemist Linus Pauling to the discovery. At the
   same time Bragg's Cavendish Laboratory was also effectively competing
   with King's College London under Sir John Randall. (Randall had turned
   down Francis Crick from working at King's College London.) Francis
   Crick and Maurice Wilkins of King's College London were personal
   friends, which influenced subsequent scientific events.
     * Spouses: Ruth Doreen Dodd Crick (m. 1940, div. 1947), Odile Speed
       Crick (m. 1949)
     * Children: Michael F. C. Crick, Gabrielle A. Crick, Jacqueline M. T.
       Crick

Biology Research

                                                             Francis Crick

                                         Discovery of the DNA Double Helix

                                         Francis Crick, lecturing ca. 1979
                                                   Francis Crick
                                                 Rosalind Franklin
                                                   James Watson
                                                  Maurice Wilkins

   Crick was interested in two fundamental unsolved problems of biology.
   First, how molecules make the transition from the non-living to the
   living, and second, how the brain makes a conscious mind. He realized
   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 into biology that he was influenced by both
   Linus Pauling and Erwin Schrödinger. 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. 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, reveal the
   secret of life.

   It was clear that some macromolecule such as protein was likely to be
   the genetic molecule. However, it was well known that proteins are
   structural and functional macromolecules some of which carry out
   enzymatic reactions of cells. In the 1940s, some evidence had been
   found pointing to another macromolecule, DNA, the other major component
   of chromosomes, as a candidate genetic molecule. Oswald Avery and his
   collaborators showed that a phenotypic difference could be caused in
   bacteria by providing them with a particular DNA molecule.
   An X-ray diffraction image for the protein myoglobin.
   Enlarge
   An X-ray diffraction image for the protein myoglobin.

   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. Crick was in the
   right place, in the right frame of mind, at the right time (1949) to
   join Max Perutz’s project at Cambridge University, and he began to work
   on the X-ray crystallography of proteins. 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.

X-ray crystallography 1949-1950

   Crick taught himself the mathematical theory of X-ray crystallography.
   During the time when Crick was learning about X-ray diffraction,
   researchers in the Cambridge lab were attempting to determine the most
   stable helical conformation of amino acid chains in proteins (the α
   helix). Pauling was the first to identify the 3.6 amino acids/turn
   ratio of the α 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 α helix; these turned out to be important lessons that
   could be applied to the helical structure of DNA. For example, he
   learned 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.

The Double Helix 1951-1953

   In 1951, together with W. Cochran and V. Vand, Crick helped to work out
   a mathematical theory of X-ray diffraction by a helical molecule. This
   theoretical result matched well with X-ray data obtained for proteins
   that contain sequences of amino acids in the Alpha helix conformation
   (published in Nature in 1952). Helical diffraction theory turned out to
   also be useful for understanding the structure of DNA.

   Late in 1951, Crick started working with James D. Watson at Cavendish
   Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in England. Using the X-ray
   diffraction results of Maurice Wilkins, Raymond Gosling and Rosalind
   Franklin of King's College London, Watson and Crick together developed
   a model for a helical structure of DNA, which they published in 1953,
   for this and subsequent work they were awarded the Nobel Prize in
   Physiology or Medicine in 1962, jointly with Maurice Wilkins.

   When James D. Watson came to Cambridge, Crick was a 35 year old
   graduate student and Watson was only 23, but he already had a Ph.D.
   They shared an interest in the fundamental problem of learning how
   genetic information might be stored in molecular form. Watson and Crick
   talked endlessly about DNA and the idea that it might be possible to
   guess a good molecular model of its structure. A key piece of
   experimentally-derived information came from X-ray diffraction images
   that had been obtained by Maurice Wilkins and his research student,
   Raymond 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. Stimulated by Wilkins, and a
   talk given by Rosalind Franklin about her work on DNA, Crick and Watson
   produced and showed off an erroneous first model of DNA. Watson, in
   particular thought they were competing against Pauling and feared that
   Pauling might determine the structure of DNA.

   Many have speculated about what might have happened had Pauling been
   able to travel to Britain as planned in May of 1952. He might have seen
   some of the Wilkins/Gosling/Franklin X-ray diffraction data and it may
   have led him to a double helix model. As it was, his political
   activities caused his travel to be restricted by the U. S. government
   and he did not visit the UK until later and he met none of the DNA
   researchers in England at that time. Watson and Crick were not
   officially working on DNA. Crick was writing his Ph.D. thesis. Watson
   also had other work such as trying to obtain crystals of myoglobin for
   X-ray diffraction experiments. In 1952 Watson did 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.
     DNA pioneers
   William Astbury
   Oswald Avery
   Erwin Chargaff
   Max Delbrück
   Jerry Donohue
   Raymond Gosling
   Phoebus Levene
   Linus Pauling
   Sir John Randall
   Erwin Schrödinger
   Alec Stokes
   Herbert Wilson

   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 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 (1951, with the phosphates inside) was obviously wrong.

   Crick described the failure of Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind 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 make a
   molecular model of DNA. They asked for and received permission to do so
   from both Bragg and Wilkins. In order to construct their model of DNA
   Watson and Crick made use of information from unpublished X-ray
   diffraction images (shown at meetings and shared by Wilkins) and
   preliminary accounts of Franklin's detailed analysis of the X-ray
   images that were included in a written progress report for the King's
   College laboratory of John Randall from late 1952.

   It is a matter of debate if Watson and Crick should have had access to
   Franklin's results before she had a chance to formally publish the
   results of her detailed analysis of her X-ray diffraction data that
   were included in the progress report. In an effort to clarify this
   issue, Perutz later published what had been in the progress report, 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 committee
   that had been created in order to "establish contact between the
   different groups of working for the Council". Randall's and Perutz's
   labs were both MRC funded laboratories.

   It is also not clear how important Franklin's unpublished results that
   were in 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 8 references in Franklin's first paper on DNA. Analysis of
   Astbury's published DNA diffraction data and the better X-ray
   diffraction images collected by Wilkins, Gosling 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.

   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 published.
   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 anti-parallel chains, but there were other chains of reasoning and
   sources of information that also led to these conclusions.

   When it became clear to Wilkins and the supervisors of Watson and Crick
   that Franklin was abandoning her work on DNA for a new job and that
   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. Franklin's X-ray diffraction data
   for DNA and her systematic analysis of DNA's structural features was
   useful to Watson and Crick in guiding them towards a correct molecular
   model. The key problem for Watson and Crick, that 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.
   Enlarge
   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 helped keep this important fact in front of Watson and
   Crick. The significance of these ratios for the structure of DNA were
   not recognized until Watson, persisting in building structural models,
   realized that A:T and C:G pairs are structurally similar. In
   particular, the length of each base pair is the same. The base pairs
   are held together by hydrogen bonds, the same non-covalent interaction
   that stabilizes the protein α helix. Watson’s recognition of the A:T
   and C:G pairs was aided by information from Jerry Donohue about the
   most likely structures of the nucleobases. After the discovery of the
   hydrogen bonded A:T and C:G pairs, Watson and Crick soon had their
   double helix 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.

   Crick did tentatively attempt to perform some experiments on nucleotide
   base pairing, but he was more of a theoretical biologist than one who
   would perform experiments. There was another close approach to
   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. 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 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
   correct interpretation of the significance of experimental results that
   had been obtained by others.

Molecular Biology

   In 1954, Crick completed his Ph.D. thesis: "X-Ray Diffraction:
   Polypeptides and Proteins" and received his degree at the age of 37.
   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.

   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".
   Collagen triple helix.
   Enlarge
   Collagen triple helix.

   In 1956 he and James 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.

   After his short time in New York, Crick returned to Cambridge where he
   worked until moving to California in 1976. Crick engaged in several
   X-ray diffraction collaborations such as one with Alexander Rich on the
   structure of collagen. 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 who were 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. 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 synthesized protein. In 1956 Crick wrote an informal paper
   about the genetic coding problem for the small group of scientists in
   Gamow’s RNA group. 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. Crick predicted that such adaptor
   molecules might exist as the links between codons and amino acids.
   Enlarge
   Molecular model of a tRNA molecule. 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 synthesized. 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:
     * 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 later (1960) realization that the messenger RNA was
   not the same as the ribosomal RNA. 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 4x4x4=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. Experimental results were
   needed; theory alone could not decide the nature of the code. Crick
   also used the term “ central dogma” to summarize 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
   organizing principle of what became known as molecular biology. Crick
   had by this time become a dominant, if not the dominant, 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. The
   details of the code came mostly from work by Marshall Nirenberg and
   others who synthesized synthetic RNA molecules and used them as
   templates for in vitro protein synthesis.

Controversy About Using King's College London's Results

   An enduring controversy has been generated by Watson and Crick's use of
   DNA X-ray diffraction data collected by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond
   Gosling. The controversy arose from the fact that some of the data were
   shown to them, without her knowledge, by her estranged colleague,
   Maurice Wilkins, and by Max Perutz. Her experimental results provided
   estimates of the water content of DNA crystals and these results were
   consistent with the two sugar-phosphate backbones being on the outside
   of the molecule. Franklin personally told Crick and Watson that the
   backbones had to be on the outside. Her identification of the space
   group for DNA crystals revealed to Crick that the two DNA strands were
   antiparallel. The X-ray diffraction images collected by Gosling and
   Franklin provided the best evidence for the helical nature of DNA.
   Franklin's superb experimental work thus proved crucial in Watson and
   Crick's discovery.

   Prior to publication of the double helix structure, Watson and Crick
   had little interaction with Franklin. Crick and Watson felt that they
   had benefitted 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 and was in part
   responsible for the terse character of the acknowledgement of
   experimental work done at King's College. 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 suggested that because of the importance of her work to
   Watson and Crick's model building, Franklin should have had her name on
   the original Watson and Crick paper in Nature. Watson and Crick offered
   joint authorship to Maurice Wilkins which he turned down at the time,
   but which he may have subsequently regretted. (Rosalind Franklin and
   Ray 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.)

Views on Religion

   In his book Of Molecules and Men, Crick expressed his views on the
   relationship between science and religion. After suggesting that it
   would become possible for people to wonder if a computer might 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. Crick felt that it was important that evolution by
   natural selection be taught in public schools and that it was
   regrettable that English schools had compulsory religious instruction.
   Crick felt 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 man 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 skeptical of organized religion and
   harbored doubts about the existence of God, referring to himself as a
   skeptic and an agnostic with "a strong inclination towards atheism".

   In October 1969, Crick participated in a celebration of the 100th year
   of the journal Nature. Crick attempted to make some predictions about
   what the next 30 years would hold for molecular biology. His
   speculations were later published in Nature. 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...."

   Crick suggested that it might be possible to find chemical changes in
   the brain that were molecular correlates of the act of prayer. He
   speculated that there might be a detectable change in the level of some
   neurotransmitter or neurohormone when people pray. Crick may 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 some day be a new science of "biochemical
   theology" seems to have been realized under an alternative name: there
   is now the new field of Neurotheology. 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.

Directed Panspermia

   During the 1960s Crick became concerned with the origins of the genetic
   code. In 1966 Crick took the place of Leslie Orgel at a meeting where
   Orgel was to talk about the origin of life. Crick speculated about
   possible stages by which an initially simple code with a few amino acid
   types might have evolved into the more complex code used by existing
   organisms. At that time, everyone thought of proteins as the only kind
   of enzymes and ribozymes had not yet been found. Many molecular
   biologists were puzzled by the problem of the origin of a protein
   replicating system as complex as what exists in organisms currently
   living on 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”. In a
   retrospective article, Crick and Orgel noted that they had been overly
   pessimistic about the chances of life evolving on Earth when they had
   assumed that some kind of self-replicating protein system was the
   molecular origin of life. Now it is easier to imagine an RNA world and
   the origin of life in the form of some self-replicating polymer besides
   protein.
   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.
   Enlarge
   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.

Neuroscience, Other Interests, Crick's Death

   Cambridge was the pinnacle of his long scientific career, but he left
   Cambridge in 1977 after 30 years, having been offered (and refused) the
   Mastership of Gonville & 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 Cambridge University 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 lead them to reject Francis. But it really was stupid.
   It was really saying, don't push us to the frontier." (source:
   conference transcript) 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 CUP in 2002—which
   Watson was presumably unaware of in 2003!

   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 then is said to have
   offered it to Crick, who also refused.

   In 1976 Crick took a sabbatical 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." After the sabbatical Crick left Cambridge in order to
   continue working at the Salk Institute. He taught himself neuroanatomy
   and studied many other areas of neuroscience research. It took him
   several years to disengage from molecular biology since exciting
   discoveries continued including the discovery of alternative splicing
   and the discovery of restriction enzymes that 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, 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 even collaborated with
   neurophilosophers such as Patricia Churchland. Crick established a
   collaboration with Christof Koch that lead to publication of a series
   of articles on consciousness during the period spanning from 1990 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. Crick also published a book describing 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's book The Astonishing Hypothesis made the
   argument that neuroscience now had the tools required to begin a
   scientific study of how brains produce conscious experiences. Crick was
   skeptical about the value of computational models of mental function
   that are not based on details about brain structure and function.

   Crick was elected a fellow of CSICOP in 1983 and a Humanist Laureate of
   the International Academy of Humanism in the same year. In 1995,
   Francis Crick was one of the original endorsers of the Ashley Montagu
   Resolution to petition for an end to the genital mutilation of
   children.

   Francis Crick was a larger than life character. He spoke rapidly, and
   rather loudly, and had an infectious and reverberating laugh, and a
   lively sense of humour.

   Crick died of colon cancer on 28 July 2004 at The University of
   California's San Diego Thornton Hospital, San Diego; he was cremated
   and his ashes scattered into the Pacific Ocean. A memorial service for
   him was held at The Salk Institute, La Jolla, near San Diego,
   California.

Reactions to Crick and his Work

   Crick has widely been described as talkative, brash and lacking
   modesty. His personality combined with his scientific accomplishments
   produced many opportunities for Crick to stimulate reactions from
   others, both inside and outside of the scientific world that was the
   centre of his intellectual and professional life.

   Rumours circulated later in his life that Crick told a colleague that
   he had taken small doses of the hallucinogenic drug LSD. However,
   during his life, Crick was ready to sue anyone who put these rumours
   into print. Crick was a founding member of a group called SOMA, one of
   many organizations that has tried to prevent criminalization of
   cannabis.

   See: http://www.intuition.org/txt/crick2.htm regarding Crick's comments
   on L.S.D.:

   (quote) "MISHLOVE: Do you have a sense of the process by which
   hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD, or psychedelic drugs, actually affect
   the brain? What is going on there?

   CRICK: Well, I don't have a detailed knowledge, no, I don't, and I'm
   not sure that anybody else really knows. They have a rough idea."

Religious Beliefs

   The conservative political analyst Mark Steyn published a pop
   psychoanalysis of Crick and an attempted deconstruction of Crick's
   scientific motivations. Steyn characterized Crick as a militant atheist
   and asserted that it was his atheism that "drove" Crick to move beyond
   conventional molecular biology towards speculative topics such as
   panspermia. Steyn described the theory of directed panspermia as
   amounting to, "gods in the skies who fertilize the earth and then
   retreat to the heavens beyond our reach." Steyn categorized Crick’s
   ideas on directed panspermia as a result of "hyper-rationalism" that,
   "lead him round to embracing a belief in a celestial creator of human
   life, indeed a deus ex machina."

   Steyn's critique of Crick ignored the fact that Crick never held a
   belief in panspermia. Crick explored the hypothesis that it might be
   possible for life forms to be moved from one planet to another. What
   "drove" Crick towards speculation about directed panspermia was the
   difficulty of imagining how a complex system like a cell could arise
   under pre-biotic conditions from non-living chemical components. After
   ribozymes were discovered, Crick became much less interested in
   panspermia because it was then much easier to imagine the pre-biotic
   origins of life as being made possible by some set of simple
   self-replicating polymers.

Creationism

   It has been suggested by some observers that Crick's speculation about
   panspermia, "fits neatly into the intelligent design concept." Crick's
   name was raised in this context in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School
   District trial over the teaching of intelligent design. However, as a
   scientist, Crick was concerned with the power of natural processes such
   as evolution to account for natural phenomena and felt that religiously
   inspired beliefs are often wrong and cannot be trusted to provide a
   sound basis for science.

   Crick wrote, "The age of the earth is now established beyond any
   reasonable doubt as very great, yet in the United States millions of
   Fundamentalists still stoutly defend the naive view that it is
   relatively short, an opinion deduced from reading the Christian Bible
   too literally. They also usually deny that animals and plants have
   evolved and changed radically over such long periods, although this is
   equally well established. This gives one little confidence that what
   they have to say about the process of natural selection is likely to be
   unbiased, since their views are predetermined by a slavish adherence to
   religious dogmas." (source: The Astonishing Hypothesis)

   In a 1987 case before the Supreme Court, Crick joined a group of other
   Nobel laureates who advised that, "'Creation-science' simply has no
   place in the public-school science classroom." Crick was also an
   advocate for the establishment of Darwin Day as a British national
   holiday.

Recognition

   The Francis Crick Prize Lectures at The Royal Society, London
   The Francis Crick Prize Lecture was established in 2003 following an
   endowment by his former colleague, Sydney Brenner, joint winner of the
   2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. The lecture is delivered
   annually in any field of biological sciences, with preference given to
   the areas Francis Crick worked himself. Importantly, the lectureship is
   aimed at younger scientists, ideally under 40, or whose career
   progression corresponds to this age.

   The Francis Crick Graduate Lectures at the University of Cambridge
   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.

   "For my generation, Francis Crick was probably the most obviously
   influential presence. He was often at lunch in the canteen of the
   Laboratory of Molecular Biology where he liked to explain what he was
   thinking about, and he was always careful to make sure that everyone
   round the table really understood. He was a frequent presence at talks
   in and around Cambridge, where he liked to ask questions. Sometimes, I
   remember thinking, they seemed slightly ignorant questions to which a
   man of his extraordinary range and ability ought to have known the
   answers. Only slowly did it dawn on me that he only and always asked
   questions when he was unclear or unsure, a great lesson." (Tim Hunt,
   first Francis Crick Graduate Lecturer: June 2005)
     * Fellow of the Royal Society
     * Fellow International Academy of Humanism
     * Fellow CSICOP

Books by Francis Crick

     * Of Molecules and Men (Prometheus Books, 2004; original edition
       1967) ISBN 1-59102-185-5
     * Life Itself (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
     * Kreiseliana: about and around Georg Kreisel; ISBN 1-56881-061-X;
       495 pages. For pages 25 - 32 "Georg Kriesel: a Few Personal
       Recollections" by Francis Crick.

Books about Francis Crick and the structure of DNA discovery

     * 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

     * Soraya De Chadarevian; Designs For Life: Molecular Biology After
       World War II, CUP 2002, 444 pp; ISBN 0-521-57078-6

     * Edwin Chargaff; Heraclitean Fire, Rockefeller Press, 1978

     * S. Chomet (Ed.), D.N.A. Genesis of a Discovery, 1994, Newman-
       Hemisphere Press, London

     * Edward Edelson, Francis Crick And James Watson: And the Building
       Blocks of Life Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-513971-2.

     * Graeme Hunter; Light Is A Messenger, the life and science of
       William Lawrence Bragg, ISBN 0-19-852921-X; Oxford University
       Press, 2004.

     * 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.

     * 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).

     * Brenda Maddox Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, 2002. ISBN
       0-00-655211-0.

     * Robert Olby; The Path to The Double Helix: Discovery of DNA; first
       published in 0ctober 1974 by MacMillan, with foreword by Francis
       Crick; ISBN 0-486-68117-3; revised in 1994, with a 9 page
       postscript. Professor Olby is currently writing a full length
       scientific biography of Francis Crick for publication by Cold
       Spring Harbour Laboratory Press in 2007.

     * Matt Ridley; Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code (Eminent
       Lives) first published in June 2006 in the USA and then in the UK
       September 2006, by HarperCollins Publishers; 192 pp, ISBN
       0-06-082333-X. See:
       http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/10/science/11books-excerpt.html

     * 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 dramatization
       Life Story by BBC Horizon (also broadcast as Race for the Double
       Helix).

     * James D. Watson; The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the
       Discovery of the Structure of DNA; The Norton Critical Edition,
       which was published in 1980, edited by Gunther S. Stent: ISBN
       0-393-01245-X. (It does not include Erwin Chargaff's criticial
       review unfortunately.)

     * Maurice Wilkins; The Third Man of the Double Helix: The
       Autobiography of Maurice Wilkins ISBN 0-19-860665-6.

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