Francis Crick facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Francis Crick
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Francis Harry Compton Crick
8 June 1916 Weston Favell, Northamptonshire, England
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| Died | 28 July 2004 (aged 88) San Diego, California, U.S.
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Ruth Doreen Dodd
(m. 1940; div. 1947)Odile Speed
(m. 1949) |
| Children | 3 |
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| Thesis | Polypeptides and proteins: X-ray studies (1954) |
| Doctoral advisor | Max Perutz |
| Doctoral students | none |
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Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was a brilliant English scientist who, along with James Watson, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin, played a key role in figuring out the amazing structure of DNA, which is like the instruction manual for all living things. This discovery was one of the most important in science history.
Contents
Early life and education
Francis was born in Weston Favell, then a small village near the English town of Northampton. He was the first son of Harry Crick and Annie Elizabeth Crick (née Wilkins). Even when he was young, he loved science and reading books to find answers about the world.
Walter Crick, his uncle, lived in a small house on the south side of Abington Avenue; he had a shed at the bottom of his little garden where he taught Crick to blow glass, do chemical experiments and to make photographic prints. When he was eight or nine he transferred to the most junior form of the Northampton Grammar School, on the Billing Road. This was about 1.25 mi (2 km) from his home so he could walk there and back, by Park Avenue South and Abington Park Crescent, but he more often went by bus or, later, by bicycle.
After the age of 14, he was educated at Mill Hill School in London (on a scholarship), where he studied mathematics, physics, and chemistry with his best friend John Shilston.
Crick studied at University College London (UCL), a constituent college of the University of London and earned a Bachelor of Science degree awarded by the University of London in 1937. Crick began a PhD at UCL, but was interrupted by World War II. He 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 (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. He was also an Honorary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and of University College London.
During World War II, he used his science skills to help with things like designing special mines for the British Navy.
Post-World War II life and work
After the war, when he was in his early thirties, Francis decided to switch from physics to biology. He felt that physics had already made huge steps, and he was excited about the big mysteries waiting to be solved in biology. He thought his background in physics would help him think about biology problems in new ways.
Research
Scientists knew that living things inherited traits from their parents, but they didn't know exactly how this information was passed down. They suspected it had something to do with molecules inside cells, especially in the chromosomes. There were two main suspects: proteins and DNA.
DNA was known to be in chromosomes, but some scientists thought it was too simple to carry all the complex information needed for life. Proteins seemed more complicated, so some thought they were the key.
Francis Crick was in Cambridge, England, working with other scientists like Max Perutz and John Kendrew, who were using a technique called X-ray crystallography to study the structure of molecules. This technique involves shooting X-rays at a crystal of a molecule and looking at the pattern the X-rays make when they bounce off. This pattern can give clues about the molecule's shape.
Discovering the Double Helix
In the early 1950s, Francis Crick teamed up with an American scientist named James Watson at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. They were both fascinated by the mystery of DNA's structure.
Other scientists were also working on this problem, including Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins at King's College London. Rosalind Franklin was an expert in X-ray crystallography and took incredibly clear X-ray pictures of DNA. One of her pictures, often called "Photo 51," was particularly important because it strongly suggested that DNA had a helical (spiral) shape.
Watson and Crick used information from various sources, including discussions with Wilkins and data from Franklin's work (like Photo 51 and her analysis of the data), to build models of the DNA molecule. They tried different arrangements of the parts that make up DNA (called nucleotides).
A crucial piece of the puzzle came from chemist Erwin Chargaff, who had discovered that in DNA, the amount of one type of nucleotide base (Adenine, or A) was always about the same as another type (Thymine, or T). Similarly, the amount of Guanine (G) was always about the same as Cytosine (C). This suggested that A paired with T, and G paired with C.
Using this pairing idea and the clues from the X-ray images about the helical shape and dimensions, Watson and Crick built a model of DNA that finally made sense. It was a double helix, like a twisted ladder, where the sides of the ladder were made of sugar and phosphate molecules, and the rungs were made of the base pairs (A with T, and G with C) held together by weak bonds. The two strands of the helix ran in opposite directions (antiparallel).
This structure immediately suggested how DNA could carry genetic information and how it could be copied. The sequence of the bases along the strands could be the code, and because A always pairs with T and G with C, each strand could serve as a template to build a new complementary strand, making an exact copy of the DNA.
Watson and Crick published their model in a scientific paper in April 1953. Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins also published papers in the same issue of the journal, presenting their experimental data that supported the model.
The Nobel Prize
For their groundbreaking work in figuring out the molecular structure of DNA and its importance for how genetic information is passed on, Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Sadly, Rosalind Franklin had passed away in 1958 and Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously (after death). Her crucial contributions are now widely recognized.
The Central Dogma
After the DNA structure was discovered, Francis Crick continued to make important contributions to understanding how genetic information is used in cells. He proposed the idea of the "central dogma" of molecular biology.
The central dogma explains the general flow of genetic information in living things:
- Information usually flows from DNA to RNA.
- Then, information flows from RNA to protein.
Think of DNA as the master blueprint in the cell's library (the nucleus). When the cell needs to build something (like a protein), it makes a temporary copy of a section of the blueprint in the form of an RNA molecule (like taking notes from the library). This RNA copy (messenger RNA) then travels out of the nucleus to the cell's protein-making machinery (ribosomes), where the instructions are read to build a specific protein.
Crick's idea was that information generally doesn't flow backward from protein to RNA or DNA. This was a very important concept for understanding how genes work.
Later Scientific Explorations
Francis Crick was a scientist with a wide range of interests. After his major work on DNA and the genetic code, he became very interested in the brain and consciousness – how we think, feel, and are aware of the world around us.
He moved to California and worked at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He studied neuroscience and tried to understand how the physical processes in the brain give rise to our conscious experience. He collaborated with other scientists and philosophers on this complex topic, focusing on things like visual awareness and the function of sleep.
He wrote several books explaining his scientific ideas to a wider audience, including "What Mad Pursuit" about his life in science and "The Astonishing Hypothesis" about the scientific search for consciousness.
Personal life
Crick married twice and fathered three children; his brother Anthony (born in 1918) predeceased him in 1966.
Spouses:
- Ruth Doreen Crick, née Dodd (m. 18 February 1940 – 8 May 1947), became Mrs. James Stewart Potter
- Odile Crick, née Speed (m. 14 August 1949 – 28 July 2004)
Children:
- Michael Francis Compton (b. 25 November 1940) [by Doreen Crick]
- Gabrielle Anne (b. 15 July 1951) [by Odile Crick]
- Jacqueline Marie-Therese [later Nichols] (b. 12 March 1954, d. 28 February 2011) [by Odile Crick];
Death
Crick died of colon cancer on the morning of 28 July 2004 at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) Thornton Hospital in La Jolla; he was cremated and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean.
A public memorial was held on 27 September 2004 at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, near San Diego, California. A private memorial for family and colleagues was held on 3 August 2004.
Awards and honours
In addition to his third share of the 1962 Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine, he received many awards and honours, including the Royal and Copley medals of the Royal Society (1972 and 1975), and also the Order of Merit (on 27 November 1991); he refused an offer of a CBE in 1963, but was often referred to in error as 'Sir Francis Crick' and even on occasions as 'Lord Crick'. He was elected an EMBO Member in 1964.
The award of Nobel prizes to John Kendrew and Max Perutz, and to Crick, Watson, and Wilkins was satirised in a short sketch in the BBC TV programme That Was The Week That Was with the Nobel Prizes being referred to as 'The Alfred Nobel Peace Pools'.
He was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1962), the United States National Academy of Sciences (1969), and the American Philosophical Society (1972).
Francis Crick Medal and Lecture
The Francis Crick Medal and Lecture was established in 2003 following an endowment by his former colleague, Sydney Brenner, joint winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. The lecture is delivered annually in any field of biological sciences, with preference given to the areas in which Francis Crick himself worked. Importantly, the lectureship is aimed at younger scientists, ideally under 40, or whose career progression corresponds to this age. As of 2019[update], Crick lectures have been delivered by Julie Ahringer, Dario Alessi, Ewan Birney, Simon Boulton, Jason Chin, Simon Fisher, Matthew Hurles, Gilean McVean, Duncan Odom, Geraint Rees, Sarah Teichmann, M. Madan Babu and Daniel Wolpert.
Francis Crick Institute
The Francis Crick Institute is a £660 million biomedical research centre located in north London, United Kingdom. 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 (UCL) and the Wellcome Trust. Completed in 2016, it is the largest centre for biomedical research and innovation in Europe.
Francis Crick Graduate Lectures
The University of Cambridge Graduate School of Biological, Medical and Veterinary Sciences hosts The Francis Crick Graduate Lectures. The first two lectures were by John Gurdon and Tim Hunt.
Other honours
- The inscription on the helices of a DNA sculpture (which was donated by James Watson) outside Clare College's Thirkill Court, Cambridge, England reads: "The structure of DNA was discovered in 1953 by Francis Crick and James Watson while Watson lived here at Clare." and on the base: "The double helix model was supported by the work of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins."
- Another sculpture entitled Discovery, by artist Lucy Glendinning was installed on Tuesday, 13 December 2005 in Abington Street, Northampton. According to the late Lynn Wilson, chairman of the Wilson Foundation, "The sculpture celebrates the life of a world class scientist who must surely be considered the greatest Northamptonian of all time — by discovering DNA he unlocked the whole future of genetics and the alphabet of life."
- Westminster City Council unveiled a green plaque to Francis Crick on the front façade of 56 St George's Square, Pimlico, London SW1 on 20 June 2007; Crick lived in the first floor flat, together with Robert Dougall of BBC radio and later TV fame, a former Royal Navy associate.
- In addition, Crick was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1959, a Fellow of the International Academy of Humanism, and a Fellow of CSICOP.
- In 1987, Crick received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
- At a meeting of the executive council of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) (formerly CSICOP) in Denver, Colorado in April 2011, Crick was selected for inclusion in CSI's Pantheon of Skeptics. The Pantheon of Skeptics was created by CSI to remember the legacy of deceased fellows of CSI and their contributions to the cause of scientific scepticism.
- A sculpted bust of Francis Crick by John Sherrill Houser, which incorporates a single "Golden" Helix, was cast in bronze in the artist's studio in New Mexico, US. The bronze was first displayed at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference (on Consciousness) at the University of Cambridge's Churchill College on 7 July 2012; it was bought by Mill Hill School in May 2013, and displayed at the inaugural Crick Dinner on 8 June 2013, and will be again at their Crick Centenary Dinner in 2016.
- The Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences of the American Philosophical Society (2001), together with Watson.
- Crick featured in the BBC Radio 4 series The New Elizabethans to mark the diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in 2012. A panel of seven academics, journalists and historians named Crick among a group of 60 people in the UK "whose actions during the reign of Elizabeth II have had a significant impact on lives in these islands and given the age its character".
See also
In Spanish: Francis Crick para niños
- Crick, Brenner et al. experiment
- Crick's wobble hypothesis
- History of RNA biology
- List of RNA biologists
- Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids (article)
- Neural correlates of consciousness
