Crick is on the right pointing to a metal-model of their proposed structure of DNA.
BTW......................I was told that the photographer that took the publicity picture (above) suggested Crick hold a slide-rule and point with it.
Posted on 07/29/2004 9:09:18 AM PDT by DoctorMichael
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.
Crick died Wednesday at University of California, San Diego, Thornton Hospital, according to Brendolyn Williams, a spokeswoman for the Salk Institute, the research body where Crick worked. Crick had been battling colon cancer.
It was 1953, while working in Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, that the British-born Crick, 36 at the time, and the American-born Watson, just 24, struck upon the famous double-helix structure - like a twisted ladder - of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA.
Not until years after the discovery were Crick and Watson's conclusions about the molecular structure of DNA firmly established. At the time, Crick later said, only a small number of people "even thought it was interesting."
A half-century later, the biotechnology industry is based largely upon Crick's and Watson's discovery. So, too, are genetically engineered foods like bigger tomatoes and innovative medical technologies like gene therapy.
Law enforcement agencies now routinely collect and test DNA from crime scenes, either to convict the guilty or set the innocent free. Social issues such as whether to have children are now often affected by expanded knowledge of DNA and its role in heredity.
The two were awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1962.
The discovery was retold in Watson's 1968 best-seller "The Double Helix," which also details the Odd Couple relationship between Crick and Watson.
Seems like yesterday they were posing with their wire model.
There were some amazing discoveries during the 20th century. What will we discover in the next?
Crick is on the right pointing to a metal-model of their proposed structure of DNA.
BTW......................I was told that the photographer that took the publicity picture (above) suggested Crick hold a slide-rule and point with it.
Farewell to a great man.
RIP
He had gone to England to research his book about the discovery of the structure of DNA..............
He said, in a dark corner of the basement of Watson and Crick's building was the rusting wire-model, in storage and forgotten..............
He got permission to take one of the bases (I think it was an Adenosine) that he brought to the lecture I attended..........
I went up afterward and held it in my hands. I won't forget it.
When I was a physics student a visiting lecturer described how the Michelson-Morley interferometer was still sitting where it was, massive pieces of granite, mercury gone of course, a hula hoop propped up in the corner, a pet rock and a mood ring left on the countertop next to the air, gas, and water spigots by the sink gathering dust, not even freshmen even looking at it curiously. No idolatry here.
LOL.
My personal experience was a little more reverential......not unlike being able to hold a piece of the 'True Cross'.
Crick was one of the truly great ones, right up there with Gregor Mendel. May he rest in peace.
A great man? I guess as an atheist you have no problem with some of the "ethical" positions he spouted after he made his great discovery.***
Here's one:
In January 1978, Francis Crick, [] a Nobel laureate, was quoted in the Pacific News Service as saying "... no newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests it forfeits the right to live."
(***Is it Crick who should be credited for the discoveries attributed to him -- or was it really his lowly lab assistants who actually did the work and came up with the ideas?)
I know. To me it is like those who can hold a personal item owned by a missing person and sense what happened to them, kind of a psychic connection through vibrations imprinted in the material object. Through imagination you can almost see what the scientist saw for the first time as answers clicked into place.
The lamestream media did as good a job then, as they do on Iraq, today.
Somewhat avant-garde statement, but I know what you mean.
And where the heck did the text in my previous post go?
You mean like the woman who made the images, but rejected theorizing about their interpretation? What exactly do you mean? Watson and Crick were the ones with the ideas.
I will grant you they were lucky. Lots of theorists go out on limbs and get sawed off.
I deleted it. For the children.
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