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He was just interested in solving problems, Or, Be there when the picture is painted
My introduction to the discovery of DNA was, as with many people, through Watson’s 141-page ‘The Double Helix,’ [assigned in Biology in 1970, competed: 2001]. A great story of discovery. Of course, Crick actually fought to stop the book’s publication. |
 
BiografieBiologinnen und Biologen | PaulingDNA Doc site
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Watson’s brush strokes were broad but through various means the basic picture Watson painted has been filled in, and departed Crick appears as one of the greatest scientists. A Mendel or Darwin walking in my time. Is peer said of him: He was just interested in solving problems. But he had an eye for finding the absolutely crucial problem. He described his joy in the process as to be the guy who was "there when the picture is painted."
Crick studied physics After work on acoustic mines during World War II, he had been looking for problems on the cusp between the inorganic and organic. He and Watson too, had a sense for both biology and chemistry. Advances in biology had been somewhat stalled, too broad a statement that, until their sojurn in the 20th Century, as biochemistry had to develop from whole cloth.
The Watson-Crick approach was after Linus Pauling’s - building physical models compatible with information from the new science of X-ray crystallography. They had good [now controversial] access to Rosalind Franklin’s DNA crystallographs which she did not [or did] understand herself. They knew what they were looking for, they would tell you, and the truth is that in a relatively few inspired months they lurched on, spurred on by a stalking Pauling, and found the secret of life. The moved from the X-ray [shown at right] to the steel model [shown at far right].
Many basic elements of discovery were on display in the hunt for the Double Helix. In his memoir, Crick wrote: “It’s true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but .. we were looking for gold. Both of us had decided … that the central problem in molecular biology was the chemical structure of the gene.”
Then he went about figuring what DNA done did. And then, onto The Brain and Consciousness, which we have noted on this site.
An odd bit about Crick: He looked at a tough problem in evolution - the narrow window for earth to cool and life to appear in fossil record and, bemusedly perhaps, in “Directed Panspermia” suggested an alien solution. He was maybe at times a bit gleeful about debunking the Bible story, but extraterrestrials? Hey no particular problem! Bunk on! Escapism in the defense of modern muckiness is okay. Just a footnote in the great parade.
See you in the gene pool the next time around Daddy Crick! Job well done!
Related
Francis Crick, Co-Discoverer of DNA, Dies at 88 - NYT, July 30, 2004
Crick in the neck - Jack Vaughan's Radio weblog, May 04
Francis Crick, DNA pioneer, dies - 30 July 04 NewScientist.com
Crick and his US collaborator James Watson - NewSci, July 30, 2004
DNAnniversary - USA Today, 2.23.2003
Unrelated
Simulation: ACC cars can keep traffic flowing
Human drivers have a tendency to brake harder than the car in front of them [mistakenly] did, erring on the side of safety. But Adaptive Cruise Control eliminates the tendency to overbrake. It smoothes out the overreactions, correcting for bad drivers, and cutting the propogation of those non-events that stall modern traffic. - WSJ [sub req], July 30, 20
Bill Gates view on what's next for Microsoft - July 30, 2004
9:43:18 PM 
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