Francis Crick's Place in History

Matt Ridley will open the 2006-2007 lecture series at the Centre for Life, discussing the life and work of Francis Crick.

Dr. Matt Ridley will be discussing his biography of the late Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.
Francis Crick, who died at the age of eighty-eight in 2004, discovered the molecule, together with James Watson, that would revolutionise science and secure their place in history.

Matt Ridley's biography - the first - traces Crick's life from middle-class mediocrity in the English Midlands, through a lacklustre education and six years designing magnetic mines for the Royal Navy, to his leap into biology. Aged thirty-one Crick suddenly began to display the unique visual imagination and intense tenacity of thought that would allow him to see the solutions to several great scientific conundrums - and to see them long before most biologists had even conceived of the problems.
Having set out to determine what makes living creatures alive and succeeded, he emigrated at the age of 60 to California and turned his attention to the second question that had fascinated him since his youth: What makes conscious creatures conscious? Time ran out before he could find the answer...

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