Francis Crick
Biologist · 1916-2004 · Biology, stage 3: Meet the biologists
Co-authored the double-helix model and stated the central dogma of molecular biology.
Overview
Crick trained as a physicist and came to biology after the war. With James Watson he built the 1953 model of DNA as a double helix with paired bases, using Franklin's diffraction measurements; the paper is one page and ends by noting that the pairing immediately suggests a copying mechanism. He then worked out, with Brenner and others, that the genetic code is read in non-overlapping triplets, and he formulated the central dogma about the direction in which sequence information can flow, restating it precisely in 1970 after it had been widely misquoted. What Mad Pursuit is his own account of the period and is the best starting point; the 1953 Nature paper takes ten minutes and is worth reading in the original.
Where to start reading
Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid 1953
The one-page Nature paper with James Watson proposing the double helix and noting that base pairing suggests how the molecule is copied.
Central Dogma of Molecular Biology 1970
A Nature article restating what the dogma does and does not claim, written after reverse transcription was reported and the original statement was misread as refuted.
What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery 1988
His memoir of the years between the double helix and the genetic code, including how much of the work was guessing constrained by data.
Part of
Sources
- Francis Crick Wikipedia
- Francis Crick The Nobel Prize
- Central Dogma NHGRI Talking Glossary of Genetic Terms
