Crick: A Mind in Motion by Matthew Cobb – the charismatic genius who changed science | Autobiography books

MMost people can tell you that Francis Crick, along with James Watson, discovered the double helix structure of DNA, and shaped our understanding of how genes work. Few know that Crick also played a major role in modern neuroscience and inspired our ongoing efforts to understand the biological basis of consciousness.

Crick once said that the two questions that interested him most were “the dividing line between the living and the nonliving, and the workings of the brain,” questions that were usually discussed in religious or mystical terms, but which he believed could be answered by science. In his new biography of the Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Matthew Cope, emeritus professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, does a remarkable job of portraying the rare thinker who not only set himself such ambitious goals, but made remarkable progress in achieving them, radically reshaping two scientific disciplines in the process.

Perhaps surprisingly, Crick was not a child prodigy. He began life as a “student of average intelligence”, born in 1916 into a middle-class rural family: his father ran a shoe company. After attending Mill Hill School in north London, he failed to gain an Oxbridge scholarship (perhaps because he was “miserable” at Latin), and studied physics and mathematics at University College London, graduating with a 2.1. He began his doctoral studies there, but it was interrupted by World War II, when he was drafted into developing mines that could evade German minesweepers.

Only after the war did Crick, inspired by Erwin Schrödinger’s 1944 book What Is Life?, decide that he wanted to investigate the molecular basis of life, which needed a foundation in biology. He managed to obtain a scholarship through the Medical Research Council to work at the Strangeways Laboratory near Cambridge, studying the structure of the cytoplasm (the liquid part of cells), and in 1949 he moved to the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, where scientists were using a technique called X-ray crystallography to investigate the structure of proteins. There he found the ideal collaborator in the 23-year-old American scientist James Watson. Remarkably, by 1953 the couple had cracked the structure of DNA.

Far from being a solitary genius, Crick was a loud-talking, charismatic man, a womanizer, a lover of poetry, and a party-goer. Crick’s inspiration and accomplishments came through extensive encounters with others, and he was skilled at bringing researchers from diverse disciplines together to solve scientific puzzles.

According to Cope’s account, Crick was bold and arrogant, with an uncanny ability to uncover connections and identify new theoretical and experimental approaches, often challenging more established experts. Lawrence Bragg, head of the Cavendish Laboratory, is said to have described him as “the kind of man who was always solving someone else’s crosswords.” This approach meant that he often stepped on people’s toes and was sometimes out of sight.

Cope wants to correct the prevailing view that Crick and Watson arrived at the double helix model after stealing data from Rosalind Franklin, a British chemist whose theories were supported by X-ray diffraction images of DNA. In The Double Helix, Watson’s famous account of his breakthrough, he wrote that he developed his ideas after seeing one of Franklin’s photographs, known as Picture 51. Cope says this was an oversimplification: Picture 51 gave Watson no new information, and Crick did not see it himself until weeks after the duo’s discovery. Cope writes that Crick and Watson should have asked Franklin for permission to use her data, and it is true that she did not receive adequate credit for her work. But the pair acknowledged Franklin’s contributions to their academic research on the double helix, and Crick and Franklin remained on friendly terms, with Crick acting as her “informal advisor.”

However, the whole thing reeks of sexism, from the lack of courtesy towards Franklin to her exclusion from networking groups like the RNA Tie Club, and letters exchanged between Crick and a male colleague discussing how Franklin was too cautious to be a first-rate scientist. I wish Cobb had called it that. (However, any female scientist of their time could have restored her public reputation after Crick’s occasional blunders.)

Cobb sets himself the ambitious task of trying to do justice to both Crick’s prolific scientific career and his colorful personal life, and this biography is an impressive work of research and scholarship. It is intended to be accessible to the general reader, with the advice that those who struggle with the science should “follow Crick’s advice to readers of his own books and skip the difficult parts.” This general reader has often struggled with technical details and vocabulary. Some difficulties may be inevitable, simply because the science is complex. However, it is convenient to quote Crick describing his research in his own words, because he had a gift for translating difficult science into general terms.

In a paragraph explaining how a rare, if beneficial, mutation can spread widely, Crick notes that “when times are hard, true novelty is needed… Chance is the only source of true novelty.” These broader philosophical reflections, which place the discoveries in their broader context, are fascinating and much needed—because when readers feel confused, they miss the wonder.