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Crick: A Mind in Motion
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About This Book
A major new biography of Francis Crick, codiscoverer of the structure of DNA, pioneering neuroscientist, and twentieth-century genius What are the moments that make a life? In Francis Crick's, the decisive moment came in 1951, when he first met James Watson. Their ensuing discovery of the structure of DNA made Crick world-famous. But neither that chance meeting nor that discovery made Crick who he was. As Matthew Cobb shows in Crick, it is another chance encounter, with a line from the writing of Beat poet Michael McClure, that reveals Crick's "THIS IS THE POWERFUL KNOWLEDGE," it shouted. Crick, having read it, would keep it with him for the rest of his life, a token of his desire to solve the riddles of existence. John Keats once accused scientists of merely wanting to "unweave a rainbow," but it was an irrepressible, Romantic urge to wonder that defined Crick, as much as a desire to find the basis of life in DNA and the workings of our minds. For the first time ever, Cobb presents the full portrait of Crick, a scientist and a his triumphs and failings, insights and oversights. Crick set out to find the powerful knowledge. Almost miraculously, he did.
Reviews
"He and his wife, Odile, smoked marijuana, listened to Jimi Hendrix and hosted glamorous and risqué parties at their London house."
"Readers will be captivated."
"Our understanding of him as a person might be enhanced if we learnt a little more about his emotional life, to complement Cobb's excellent review of his intellectual powers ..."
"Cobb aims for the tricky 'middle path': a life vivid enough to engage readers who haven't thought about the double helix since high school, and detailed enough to satisfy the scientists ..."
"The picture it builds is of a brilliant, garrulous and often exasperating individual ..."
"Cobb sets himself an ambitious task in trying to do justice to both Crick's prolific scientific career and his colourful personal life, and this biography is an impressive work of research and scholarship."
"Cobb's biography does something different."
"Cobb is at his best when it comes to the science—able to explain in page-turning prose why, for instance, scientists once thought genes were made of proteins ..."
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