Francis Crick Born: DNA Pioneer Unlocks Life's Code

Francis Crick had not yet finished his PhD when he and James Watson determined the structure of DNA. Born on June 8, 1916, in Northampton, England, he studied physics at University College London before World War II interrupted his education. He worked on mine design for the Admiralty during the war, then shifted to biology, a field that was beginning to attract physicists who believed the principles of physics could unlock the secrets of living systems. He arrived at the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge in 1949 as a doctoral student at age 33, an unusually late start for a scientific career that would prove to be one of the most consequential in history. Watson, an American geneticist 12 years younger, arrived in 1951. Their partnership combined Watson's knowledge of genetics and biology with Crick's expertise in X-ray crystallography and physical theory. The critical data came from Rosalind Franklin at King's College London, whose X-ray diffraction photograph, known as Photo 51, showed the helical structure of DNA with exceptional clarity. Maurice Wilkins, Franklin's colleague, showed the photograph to Watson without Franklin's permission. The image confirmed the helical structure and provided the key measurements. Watson and Crick built their model of the double helix in February 1953 and published their one-page paper in Nature on April 25, 1953. Crick reportedly ran into the Eagle pub in Cambridge and told the regulars they had "found the secret of life." The Nobel Prize followed in 1962, shared with Watson and Wilkins. Franklin had died of ovarian cancer in 1958 at age 37, possibly caused by radiation exposure from her X-ray work. The Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously. Crick spent his later career studying consciousness and died on July 28, 2004.