DNA Scientist Francis Crick Dies at 88

Thursday, July 29th, 2004

Crick, of Watson and Crick, is dead. From DNA Scientist Francis Crick Dies at 88:

Nobel Prize-winning scientist Francis Crick, who with James Watson discovered the spiral, ‘double-helix’ structure of DNA, paving the way for everything from DNA blood tests to genetically engineered tomatoes, has died. He was 88.

Interesting fellow:

Unlike many scientists, Crick did not spend his days toiling away in a lab or instructing students. Instead, he read and mused in his Salk Institute office overlooking the Pacific Ocean, putting in full days well beyond retirement age. He had come to Salk after resigning from the Cambridge faculty in 1977.

Crick was born in Britain in 1916 to a shoe factory owner and his wife. He studied physics at University College and then built underwater mines for the British government during World War II.

After the war, Crick became interested in “the division between the living and the non-living” and decided to teach himself biology and chemistry.

In later years, Crick wrote “The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul,” which had as its central tenet that everything we see, feel, think and experience is controlled by brain chemistry, not some inner spirit or will.

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