Francis Crick

"Politeness is the poison of all good collaboration in science." - Francis Crick.

"I have never met Francis Crick in a modest mood" - James Watson.

Francis Crick (1916-2004) was, perhaps, the greatest biologist of the twentieth century and the founder of molecular biology. Francis Crick (with James Watson) unravelled the DNA double Helix and went on to decipher: the genetic code (three nucleotides = one amino acid; DNA replication; code transcription by mRNA; translation into amino acid sequences by transfer RNA

The Copernican revolution removed the earth from the centre of the universe, Darwin's theory of evolution removed us from the pinnacle of creation, and Crick and Watson's' revolution banished vitalism from science.

In his last book "The Astonishing Hypothesis" he pursued an understanding of consciousness, an understanding that our sense of self is merely the activity of brain cells.

"There was never a time in the pre-DNA era when biologists said 'Let us first clearly define life before we explore it'. We just went out there and found out what it was." - Francis Crick

"It is better to tackle ten fundamental problems and succeed in only one, than to tackle ten trivial ones and solve them all!" - Francis Crick

"Nature isn't conspiring against us to make important problems difficult, so given a finite life span, aim high—go after fundamental problems." - Francis Crick