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Francis Crick was born in a small town near Northampton, England. As a child, he
was very inquisitive and he loved to read all kinds of books. His favourite books
were ones about science. The science books inspired him to do experiments at home
in his kitchen. His interest in science continued and he went on to study physics
at University College London. Unfortunately the physics he learned in class was
already out of date. He overcame this by continuing to teach himself at home, by
reading more books and doing more experiments. His studies were interrupted by
World War II. During the war he worked for the Admiralty, mostly designing and
improving mines.
After the war he continued to work at the Admiralty, but he knew he did not
want to design weapons for the rest of his life. The problem was that he was not
sure what he did want to do. He liked reading, thinking, and talking about the
new discoveries being made in biology. In the end, he decided that he wanted to
study biology in more detail. He visited several labs and scientists to help him
decide exactly where he wanted to work and exactly what he wanted to study. He
finally settled at
Strangeways Laboratory in Cambridge, where he worked on the
effects of magnetism on cells.
In 1947, he moved to the Cavendish Laboratory
in Cambridge to study proteins.
He talked louder and faster than anyone else and was interested in all the
experiments going on around him, not just his own study of proteins. Unfortunately
his loud laugh would often annoy Professor Bragg, his supervisor!
Francis Crick was very interested in how genetic information was communicated,
and believed that DNA could be the key. When James Watson
arrived in Cambridge
in 1951 they became friends immediately. They began working together to discover
the structure of DNA. In 1953 they built the first accurate model of the structure
of DNA. Their model showed that the structure of DNA is a double helix, like a
twisted ladder. In 1962, Francis Crick shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or
Medicine with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins
who, with Rosalind Franklin,
provided the data on which the structure was based.
Even after the discovery of the structure of DNA, there were still questions about
how DNA stored and used information. Francis Crick continued to study DNA to try
and figure out how it helps to build molecules. In 1961, Francis Crick and Sydney
Brenner showed how RNA is used to read the information stored in DNA.
For most of his career, Francis Crick worked for the
Medical Research Council in
Cambridge. In 1976, he moved to the Salk Institute
in California, and began
studying how the brain develops. In 1988, he wrote about his experiences in
What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery. He is generally
described as being very bright and having a dry, British sense of humour. He
swims every day to keep healthy and still loves to talk about science.
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