Francis Crick
Francis Harry Compton Crick was born on the 8th of June 1916 in Weston Favell, a small village near the English town of Northampton. His father and uncle ran the family boot and shoe factory there. He grew up with an amateur naturalist grandfather named Walter Drawbridge Crick who corresponded with Charles Darwin. This grandfather taught young Francis to blow glass and make photographic prints in a shed at the bottom of his garden. By age twelve he stopped attending church because he preferred scientific answers over religious belief. He walked or took the bus to Northampton Grammar School before moving to Mill Hill School in London on a scholarship. At Mill Hill he studied mathematics and physics alongside his best friend John Shilston. He shared the Walter Knox Prize for Chemistry on Friday the 7th of July 1933. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from University College London in 1937.
In late 1951 Francis Crick began working with James Watson at Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. They were racing against Linus Pauling to discover DNA structure after Pauling had recently found the alpha helix in proteins. A key piece of information came from X-ray diffraction images taken by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling at King's College London. Maurice Wilkins showed them Photo 51 without Franklin's knowledge. In February 1953 they constructed their model using data from an unpublished progress report given to Crick by Max Perutz. The discovery was made on the 28th of February 1953. Their first paper appeared in Nature magazine on the 25th of April 1953. Sir Lawrence Bragg announced the finding at a Solvay conference in Belgium on the 8th of April 1953. News reached readers of The New York Times on the 16th of May 1953. Crick wrote a letter to his son Michael explaining the discovery before it was public. That letter sold for over six million dollars at Christie's auction house in 2013.
After discovering DNA structure Crick turned his attention to how genetic information flows inside cells. He proposed that information moves from nucleic acids like DNA or RNA to proteins but never back again. This one-way flow became known as the central dogma of molecular biology. In 1958 he listed key features including messenger RNA carrying instructions to the cytoplasm. Adaptor molecules later identified as tRNAs matched short sequences of nucleotides to specific amino acids. Ribonucleic-protein complexes called ribosomes catalyzed protein assembly. On the 15th of April 1960 Crick and Sydney Brenner realized messenger RNA differed from ribosomal RNA. Experiments by Matthew Meselson proved its existence later that summer. Marshall Nirenberg announced results showing a triplet code in Moscow during a 1961 conference. Crick invited him to speak to a larger audience immediately after. The code uses sixty-four possible triplets to specify twenty amino acids. Some amino acids have multiple codes while others use only one.
The use of Rosalind Franklin's unpublished X-ray diffraction data generated enduring controversy. She was unaware that her work had been shared with Watson and Crick without permission. Maurice Wilkins showed them Photo 51 which provided the best evidence for helical structure. A research progress report intended for Medical Research Council committees contained her crystallographic calculations. Max Perutz gave this report to Crick in mid-February 1953. Franklin submitted two manuscripts on form A DNA to Acta Crystallographica on the 6th of March 1953. These arrived one day before Crick and Watson completed their model. Brenda Maddox suggests Franklin should have been named co-author due to the importance of her experimental results. Watson portrayed her negatively in his book The Double Helix as unable to interpret her own data. Aaron Klug believed she was two steps away from solving the double helix herself. Her departure from King's College meant all DNA work belonged exclusively to that institution under Sir John Randall.
In 1976 Francis Crick took a sabbatical year at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla California. He left Cambridge after thirty years there to continue working at the institute. He taught himself neuroanatomy and studied many areas of neuroscience research. By the 1980s he devoted full attention to consciousness after molecular biology discoveries continued. In 1983 he proposed reverse learning or unlearning as the function of REM sleep and dreaming with Robert Mitchison. His final phase involved collaboration with Christof Koch publishing articles from 1990 to 2005. They focused on how the brain generates visual awareness within hundreds of milliseconds. Crick wrote to Martynas Yčas in April 1996 stating they might get a glimpse of the answer by century end. He remained editing manuscripts until his death on the 28th of July 2004 at UCSD Thornton Hospital. A public memorial was held on the 27th of September 2004 at the Salk Institute.
Francis Crick referred to himself as a humanist believing human problems must be faced without supernatural authority. He publicly called for humanism to replace religion as humanity's guiding force. He stated Christian beliefs were ridiculous and should not be taught to young children. In 1960 he accepted an honorary fellowship at Churchill College Cambridge partly because it lacked a chapel. When a large donation established a chapel later he resigned his fellowship in protest. He signed the Humanist Manifesto in 2003 alongside twenty-one other Nobel laureates. He joined a group advising the U.S. Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard that creation-science had no place in classrooms. He advocated establishing Darwin Day as a British national holiday. He speculated about biochemical theology finding chemical changes in the brain correlating with prayer. He questioned why any part of the Bible should be accepted if some parts are manifestly wrong.
Crick received the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins. He also won the Royal Medal from the Royal Society in 1972 and the Copley Medal in 1975. The Order of Merit was awarded on the 27th of November 1991. He refused an offer of a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1963. His Nobel Prize medal sold for $2,270,000 at Heritage Auctions in June 2013 to Jack Wang CEO of Biomobie. Twenty percent of the sale price went to the Francis Crick Institute in London. The institute is a £660 million biomedical research center completed in 2016. It stands as Europe's largest center for biomedical research and innovation. The Francis Crick Medal and Lecture were established in 2003 by Sydney Brenner. The first lectures were delivered by John Gurdon and Tim Hunt. His ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean after his death.
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Common questions
When and where was Francis Crick born?
Francis Harry Compton Crick was born on the 8th of June 1916 in Weston Favell, a small village near Northampton. His father and uncle ran the family boot and shoe factory there.
What date did Francis Crick discover the DNA structure?
The discovery of the DNA structure by Francis Crick and James Watson occurred on the 28th of February 1953. Their first paper appeared in Nature magazine on the 25th of April 1953 after Sir Lawrence Bragg announced the finding at a Solvay conference in Belgium on the 8th of April 1953.
How much money did Francis Crick's letter to his son sell for?
A letter written by Francis Crick to his son Michael explaining the DNA discovery sold for over six million dollars at Christie's auction house in 2013. This sale occurred long after he wrote the letter before the public announcement of their work.
Why did Francis Crick resign from Churchill College Cambridge?
Francis Crick resigned from his honorary fellowship at Churchill College Cambridge because a large donation established a chapel there. He had accepted the fellowship partly because it lacked a chapel and viewed Christian beliefs as ridiculous when teaching young children.
When did Francis Crick die and where was his memorial held?
Francis Crick died on the 28th of July 2004 at UCSD Thornton Hospital. A public memorial was held on the 27th of September 2004 at the Salk Institute.