FRANCIS CRICKCo-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA,molecular scientist Dr Francis Crick died on 28 July, 2004 in California at the age of 88.Initially a physicist, he made his Nobel Prize-winningcontribution to biology after just six years of moving into the field.A man for whom modesty was a rare occurrence, hisachievements justified his own persona: His DNA work is considered the greatestcontribution to the field since Darwin ’stheory of evolution.Dr Crick also wrote on religion and consciousness, apparentlyexperimenting with LSD and had a tempestuous relationship with academicinstitutions, often refusing positions or himself being snubbed for ones heapplied for – including a professorship at Cambridge University after his DNA discovery.Born in Weston Favell, Northamptonshire on 8 June 1916,Francis Harry Compton Crick was the eldest son of a shoe factory owner but wona scholarship to Mill Hill School in London atthe age of 14 having shown an interest and aptitude for sciences from a youngage.After he failed to get a place at Cambridge University ,he read physics at University College London, getting a Bachelor of Sciencedegree in 1937 and then embarking on a doctorate in the viscosity of water.But the Second World War was to curtail his studies as hejoined the Admiralty Mining Establishment to develop mines - but the war provedfortuitous for Dr Crick’s career as he did not return to physics.In 1947 he was divorced from his first wife Ruth afterseven years of marriage and one son, Michael and went belatedly to Cambridge to work at theStrangeways Research Laboratory and to study biology with a Medical ResearchCouncil studentship.Two years later he married second wife Odile, who bore himtwo daughters, Gabrielle and Jacqueline, and he moved to the CavendishLaboratory where he began another PhD.But before he was even to complete his doctorate, on 28February 1953, Mr Crick and American James Watson discovered the double helixstructure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, published on 25 April that year inNature – or as Dr Crick, known for his immodesty, apparently announced in aCambridge pub, they had “found the secret of life”.The pair, along with Maurice Wilkins of King’s CollegeLondon who had with Rosalind Franklin been instrumental in X-ray diffractionstudies which were key to unravelling DNA, were awarded the Nobel Prize forPhysiology or Medicine in 1962.After finishing his PhD, he was to take a post at the SalkInstitute for Biological Studies in SanDiego , California ,and moved there in 1977 where he died in 2004 of cancer of the colon.Dr Crick was famed for his confidence bordering on arrogance,though he once dismissively described his discovery of the structure of DNA as:"We were lucky with DNA. Like America , it was just waiting to bediscovered."His work was recognised not only by the Nobel Prize but alsoby the Order of Merit, awarded by the Queen in 1999 and his name is now givento lecture series.Dr Crick was also an ardent atheist, resigning his fellowshipof Churchill College Cambridge when it built a chapel and was active inopposing creationism in schools and advocating a Darwin Day holiday – he alsosuggested in 1981 book Life Itself that life on earth had been deposited asmicro-organisms from a passing spaceship.He also theorised on the subject of the soul and how itcould be just a construct of the brain’s chemistry, but Dr Crick will beremembered for his significant contribution to the understanding of DNA andlaying the foundations for further future developments.
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