84 Facts About Francis Crick

Francis Harry Compton Crick was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist.

Francis Crick was an important theoretical molecular biologist and played a crucial role in research related to revealing the helical structure of DNA.

Francis Crick is widely known for the use of the term "central dogma" to summarise the idea that once information is transferred from nucleic acids to proteins, it cannot flow back to nucleic acids.

Francis Crick 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.

Francis Crick was born on 8 June 1916 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.

At an early age, Francis Crick was attracted to science and what he could learn about it from books.

Francis Crick shared the Walter Knox Prize for Chemistry on Mill Hill School's Foundation Day, Friday, 7 July 1933.

Francis Crick declared that his success was founded on the quality of teaching he received whilst a pupil at Mill Hill.

Francis Crick studied at University College London, a constituent college of the University of London and earned a Bachelor of Science degree awarded by the University of London in 1937.

Francis Crick began a PhD at UCL, but was interrupted by World War II.

Francis Crick later became a PhD student and Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and mainly worked at the Cavendish Laboratory and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

Francis Crick was an Honorary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and of University College, London.

Francis Crick did postdoctoral work at the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute, now part of the New York University Tandon School of Engineering.

In 1947, aged 31, Francis Crick began studying biology and became part of an important migration of physical scientists into biology research.

Francis 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.

Francis Crick married twice and fathered three children; his brother Anthony was born on in 1918 and predeceased him in 1966.

Francis Crick died of colon cancer on the morning of 28 July 2004 at the University of California, San Diego Thornton Hospital in La Jolla; he was cremated and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean.

Francis 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.

Francis Crick realised that his background made him more qualified for research on the first topic and the field of biophysics.

Francis Crick had the very optimistic view that life would very soon be created in a test tube.

However, some people thought that Francis Crick was unduly optimistic.

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

Francis 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.

In 1951 and 1952, together with William Cochran and Vladimir Vand, Francis Crick assisted in the development of a mathematical theory of X-ray diffraction by a helical molecule.

Late in 1951, Francis Crick started working with James Watson at Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, England.

When Watson came to Cambridge, Francis Crick was a 35-year-old graduate student and Watson was only 23, but had already obtained a PhD.

Watson and Francis Crick talked endlessly about DNA and the idea that it might be possible to guess a good molecular model of its structure.

Francis Crick was writing his PhD thesis; Watson had other work such as trying to obtain crystals of myoglobin for X-ray diffraction experiments.

Francis 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.

Francis Crick did not see Franklin's B form X-ray images until after the DNA double helix model was published.

Francis Crick's access to Franklin's progress report of late 1952 is what made Francis Crick confident that DNA was a double helix with antiparallel chains, but there were other chains of reasoning and sources of information that led to these conclusions.

Franklin's X-ray diffraction data for DNA and her systematic analysis of DNA's structural features were useful to Watson and Francis Crick in guiding them towards a correct molecular model.

Francis Crick did tentatively attempt to perform some experiments on nucleotide base pairing, but he was more of a theoretical biologist than an experimental biologist.

Francis Crick had started to think about interactions between the bases.

Francis Crick asked John Griffith to try to calculate attractive interactions between the DNA bases from chemical principles and quantum mechanics.

At that time, Francis 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.

The DNA double helix structure proposed by Watson and Francis Crick was based upon "Watson-Francis Crick" bonds between the four bases most frequently found in DNA and RNA.

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

Francis 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.

In 1953, Watson and Francis 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".

Francis Crick engaged in several X-ray diffraction collaborations such as one with Alexander Rich on the structure of collagen.

However, Francis Crick was quickly drifting away from continued work related to his expertise in the interpretation of X-ray diffraction patterns of proteins.

In 1956, Francis Crick wrote an informal paper about the genetic coding problem for the small group of scientists in Gamow's RNA group.

Francis Crick proposed that there was a corresponding set of small "adaptor molecules" that would hydrogen bond to short sequences of a nucleic acid, and link to one of the amino acids.

Francis Crick explored the many theoretical possibilities by which short nucleic acid sequences might code for the 20 amino acids.

Francis Crick explored other codes in which, for various reasons, only some of the triplets were used, "magically" producing just the 20 needed combinations.

Francis Crick used the term "central dogma" to summarise an idea that implies that genetic information flow between macromolecules would be essentially one-way:.

Some critics thought that by using the word "dogma", Francis 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.

Francis Crick was focused on this third component and it became the organising principle of what became known as molecular biology.

Francis Crick had by this time become a highly influential theoretical molecular biologist.

Francis Crick's reaction was to invite Nirenberg to deliver his talk to a larger audience.

Francis Crick 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.

Francis Crick 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.

Francis Crick wrote a series of three draft manuscripts, two of which included a double helical DNA backbone.

Brenda Maddox suggests that because of the importance of her experimental results in Watson and Francis Crick's model building and theoretical analysis, Franklin should have had her name on the original Watson and Francis Crick paper in Nature.

Francis Crick's 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.

Francis Crick spoke rapidly, and rather loudly, and had an infectious and reverberating laugh, and a lively sense of humour.

Francis Crick occasionally expressed his views on eugenics, usually in private letters.

For example, Francis Crick advocated a form of positive eugenics in which wealthy parents would be encouraged to have more children.

Biologist Nancy Hopkins says when she was an undergraduate in the 1960s, Francis Crick put his hands on her breasts during a lab visit.

For Francis Crick, the mind is a product of physical brain activity and the brain had evolved by natural means over millions of years.

Francis Crick 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.

Francis Crick 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.

Francis Crick was sceptical of organised religion, referring to himself as a sceptic and an agnostic with "a strong inclination towards atheism".

In 1960, Francis Crick accepted an honorary fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge, one factor being that the new college did not have a chapel.

Francis Crick discussed what he described as a possible new direction for research, what he called "biochemical theology".

Francis Crick wrote "so many people pray that one finds it hard to believe that they do not get some satisfaction from it".

Francis Crick suggested that it might be possible to find chemical changes in the brain that were molecular correlates of the act of prayer.

Francis Crick speculated that there might be a detectable change in the level of some neurotransmitter or neurohormone when people pray.

Francis Crick might have been imagining substances such as dopamine that are released by the brain under certain conditions and produce rewarding sensations.

In 1966, Francis Crick took the place of Leslie Orgel at a meeting where Orgel was to talk about the origin of life.

Francis 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.

In 1976, Francis Crick addressed the origin of protein synthesis in a paper with Sydney Brenner, Aaron Klug, and George Pieczenik.

In 1976, Francis Crick took a sabbatical year at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.

Francis Crick had been a nonresident fellow of the Institute since 1960.

Francis Crick was an adjunct professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Francis Crick taught himself neuroanatomy and studied many other areas of neuroscience research.

Francis Crick hoped he might aid progress in neuroscience by promoting constructive interactions between specialists from the many different subdisciplines concerned with consciousness.

Francis Crick even collaborated with neurophilosophers such as Patricia Churchland.

Francis 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.

Francis Crick was sceptical about the value of computational models of mental function that are not based on details about brain structure and function.

Francis Crick was aware that research on consciousness was a difficult task, as he wrote to Martynas Ycas in April 1996:.

Francis Crick was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the United States National Academy of Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.

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 and the Wellcome Trust.