Content area
Hum Genet (2010) 127:461462 DOI 10.1007/s00439-010-0796-5
BOOK REVIEW
Olby, Robert (2009): Francis Crick. Hunter of Lifes Secrets
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, HB, 538 pages, Price 30, ISBN: 978-0-87969-798-3
Peter S. Harper
Published online: 6 February 2010 Springer-Verlag 2010
Among the many outstanding scientists who founded molecular biology in the 1950s and 1960s, Francis Crick was the central Wgure; his ideas and work underpin not only the advances in understanding of the Weld, but also the ferment of the vitality and excitement characterising this remarkable period. Yet, Crick was a surprisingly private person, his autobiography (Crick 1988) reticent and restrained, so to have this detailed life, the Wrst full scientiWc biography, is both welcome and of historical importance.
Crick could have wished for no more suitable biographer than science historian Robert Olby, who knew him for almost 40 years and who has had full access to family members and documents; he has previously documented Cricks early work in his 1974 book The Path to the Double Helix (Olby 1974). Olby gives a vivid account both of Cricks work over a period of 60 years, and of his life, and there is much in this book that will prove to be unfamiliar, perhaps especially to geneticists.
Olby introduces his book with two of the best-known scenes involving Crickthe award of the Nobel Prize in 1962, along with Watson, Perutz and others, and his later vehement protest over the publication of Watsons The Double Helix, which led to its rejection by Harvard University Press, only to become a best seller anyway when later published elsewhere (Watson 1968). Crick was incensed that Watson had betrayed his privacy as well as by his misleading portrayal of others involved, notably Rosalind Franklin, who had become a close friend of the Cricks before her early death.
Returning to beginnings, Olbys detailed account of Cricks family and early life is interesting in its very normality, a background of modestly successful business in the provinces (Northampton) with no hint of genius and a complete absence of science in previous generations. Cricks teachers, along with others, recognised his ability but had no idea that it was so exceptional. He failed to win a scholarship to Cambridge, and at University College, London, did not get Wrst class honours in physics. It took the advent of war to bring out his full abilities.
Olby deals very completely with Cricks wartime years, with which I for one was entirely unfamiliar; they were spent mainly in the naval unit responsible for the design and detection of mines, and gave him an exceptional level of independence and responsibility, both scientiWc and administrative. His small group played a major role in ensuring naval dominance for the Allies at sea and earned him a high reputation for organisation as well as originality. Crick provides a striking example of how valuable was Churchills policy of bringing highly talented scientists into the heart of the war eVort, despite their total inappropriateness to all areas of military life. Max Perutz, Desmond Bernal and JBS Haldane were among this remarkable and improbable array of talent implanted into the military.
After the wars end though, Crick, like many others, found himself having to start his career again from the beginning, aged over 30 and with a family to support, and with his war experience counting for little. Olby shows how his persistence in following his clear aim to work at the interface of biology and the physical sciences was brought to fruit with the help of others who noted and supported his talent. Among these was Edward Mellanby at the Medical Research Council, illustrating just one facet of the Councils farsightedness and Xexibility in the development of molecular biology at Cambridge. Equally important
P. S. Harper (&)
Institute of Medical Genetics, School of Medicine,
CardiV University, Heath Park, CardiV CF14 4XN, UK e-mail: [email protected]
123
462 Hum Genet (2010) 127:461462
was the mentoring given by Honor Fell, head of the Strangeways Laboratory, Cambridge, where Crick was able for the Wrst time to learn biological techniques and to beneWt from a wider biological environment, before moving to the Cavendish Laboratory to become part of Max Perutzs nascent group. Both Fell and Perutz show how important can be the inXuence of a supportive unit head on the talent of such an unusual and not always easy personality as Crick. Crick was also extraordinarily fortunate in having such a talented, tolerant and supportive partner as his second wife, Odile.
The central part of the book deals with the already well-known and documented period of Cricks work with James Watson on the structure of DNA, and subsequently on the genetic code with Sydney Brenner and others. This remarkable story, given in detail here, is well worth reading even if already familiar. Olby clearly shows how Cricks background in experimental physics, his wide reading and his ability to know where to attack a problem were all essential parts of his success; it was not simply a matter of discussions and model building, or code-breaking, as sometimes implied. Perhaps, the most touching part of this section is the long letter written by Crick to his 13-year-old son Michael, explaining the discovery of the structure of DNAas clear an explanation as anything that can be seen today.
Cricks Cambridge period contained much more than molecular biology; his enjoyment of controversy found plenty of scope there, most notably his resignation as a Fellow of Churchill College following the proposal to build a chapel, reXecting his uncompromising and consistent atheism, present since childhood. He also proved to be a supporter of eugenics, albeit of the more limited viewpoint that more able people should have more children, rather than
the more extreme measures suggested by contemporaries such as Muller or Pauling.
For most people working in genetics, the last phase of Cricks life is the least familiar and, as Olby demonstrates, it was not simply a coda to the work on molecular biology, but a substantial chapter of 25 years, containing major contributions. Entering a new Weld at the age of 60 is inevitably a challenge, and equally inevitably Crick could never be such a dominant Wgure in the neurosciences as he was in molecular biology. He was fortunate, though in having a secure and supportive base at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, which allowed him to develop his ideas and to form some remarkable collaborations with younger scientists. Crick deliberately chose what must be the most challenging area of all, the physical basis of consciousness, approached through visual perception, and it will be interesting to see how his contribution is judged in future when this Weld reaches the stage that Crick was able to achieve previously for molecular biology.
For exploring and documenting all these and other aspects of Cricks life in a readable, sensitive and not uncritical manner, readers from all backgrounds have much to thank Robert Olby for. His story will help to conWrm Francis Crick as one of the key people responsible for the transformation of our understanding of life and its processes.
References
Crick F (1988) What mad pursuit. A personal view of scientiWc discovery. Basic Books, New York
Olby R (1974) The path to the double helix. University of Washington
Press, SeattleWatson JD (1968) The double helix. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London
123
Springer-Verlag 2010