Biographical Sketch
Francis Harry Compton Crick was born on June
8th, 1916, at Northampton, England, being the
elder child of Harry Crick and Annie Elizabeth
Wilkins. He has one brother, A. F. Crick, who
is a doctor in New Zealand.
Crick was educated at Northampton Grammar
School and Mill Hill School, London. He studied
physics at University College, London, obtained
a B.Sc. in 1937, and started research for a
Ph.D. under Prof E. N. da C. Andrade, but this
was interrupted by the outbreak of war in 1939.
During the war he worked as a scientist for
the British Admiralty, mainly in connection
with magnetic and acoustic mines. He left the
Admiralty in 1947 to study biology.
Supported by a studentship
from the Medical Research Council and with
some financial help
from his family, Crick went to Cambridge and
worked at the Strangeways Research Laboratory.
In 1949 he joined the Medical Research Council
Unit headed by M. F. Perutz of which he has
been a member ever since. This Unit was for
many years housed in the Cavendish Laboratory
Cambridge, but in 1962 moved into a large new
building - the Medical Research Council Laboratory
of Molecular Biology - on the New Hospital
site. He became a research student for the
second time in 1950, being accepted as a member
of Caius College, Cambridge, and obtained a
Ph.D. in 1954 on a thesis entitled «X-ray
diffraction: polypeptides and proteins».
During the academic year 1953-1954 Crick was
on leave of absence at the Protein Structure
Project of the Brooklyn Polytechnic in Brooklyn,
New York. He has also lectured at Harvard,
as a Visiting Professor, on two occasions,
and has visited other laboratories in the States
for short periods.
In 1947 Crick knew no biology and practically
no organic chemistry or crystallography, so
that much of the next few years was spent in
learning the elements of these subjects. During
this period, together with W. Cochran and V.
Vand he worked out the general theory of X-ray
diffraction by a helix, and at the same time
as L. Pauling and R. B. Corey, suggested that
the alpha-keratin pattern was due to alpha-helices
coiled round each other.
A critical influence in Crick's career was
his friendship, beginning in 1951, with J.
D. Watson, then a young man of 23, leading
in 1953 to the proposal of the double-helical
structure for DNA and the replication scheme.
Crick and Watson subsequently suggested a general
theory for the structure of small viruses.
Crick in collaboration with A. Rich has proposed
structures for polyglycine II and collagen
and (with A. Rich, D. R. Davies, and J. D.Watson)
a structure for polyadenylic acid.
In recent years Crick,
in collaboration with S. Brenner, has concentrated
more on biochemistry
and genetics leading to ideas about protein
synthesis (the «adaptor hypothesis»),
and the genetic code, and in particular to
work on acridine-type mutants.
Crick was made an F.R.S. in 1959. He was awarded
the Prix Charles Leopold Meyer of the French
Academy of Sciences in 1961, and the Award
of Merit of the Gairdner Foundation in 1962.
Together with J. D. Watson he was a Warren
Triennial Prize Lecturer in 1959 and received
a Research Corporation Award in 1962. With
J. D. Watson and M. H. F. Wilkins he was presented
with a Lasker Foundation Award in 1960. In
1962 he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member
of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
and a Fellow of University College, London.
He was a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge,
in 1960-1961, and is now a non-resident Fellow
of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies,
San Diego, California.
In 1940 Crick married Ruth
Doreen Dodd. Their son, Michael F. C. Crick
is a scientist. They
were divorced in 1947. In 1949 Crick married
Odile Speed. They have two daughters, Gabrielle
A. Crick and Jacqueline M. T. Crick. The family
lives in a house appropriately called «The
Golden Helix», in which Crick likes to
find his recreation in conversation with his
friends.
From Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine
1942-1962, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam,
1964
This autobiography/biography was written at
the time of the award and later published in
the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures.
The information is sometimes updated with an
addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite
this document, always state the source as shown
above.
For more updated biographical information,
see:
Crick, F.H.C., What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Science. Basic Books,
New York, 1988.
Francis Crick died on July 28, 2004.
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