Crick, Francis Harry Compton
From The Encyclopedia of Earth
James Watson and Francis Crick with their DNA model at the Cavendish Laboratories in 1953. (Photo: C. Barrington Brown)
August 24, 2008, 3:17 pm
Francis Harry Compton Crick (1916-2004), an English biologist, discovered the double-helical structure for DNA and its replication scheme along with J. D. Watson in 1953. Crick and Watson subsequently suggested a general theory for the structure of small viruses and shared the Nobel Prize in physiology/medicine in 1962. Crick had been greatly influenced after reading What is Life? The Physical Aspects of the Living Cell by physicist Erwin Schrödinger. Schrödinger was interested in the idea of applying physics to the study of biology and proposed investigating genes at the molecular level. This motivated Crick to switch his field from particle physics to biology.
Further Reading
- Genome News Network. Francis Harry Compton Crick (1916-2004).
- Nobel Foundation. Francis Harry Compton Crick - Biography.
- ThinkQuest Library. The People of Genetics: Francis Harry Compton Crick.
