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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
"Steers well clear of prurient interest, but there are hints that Crick's affairs were not without consequences for his work and mental stability."
"Cobb carefully addresses the controversy surrounding Watson and Crick's use of the British molecular chemist Rosalind Franklin's work, but fails to look more broadly at the way women scientists have been excluded from the kind of intimate, generative male collaboration that fueled Crick's brilliance ..."
"Cobb, 'even though most neuroscientists have no idea that Crick was the first to coherently articulate them' ..."
"A knowledgeable but bloated biography of one of the biggest names in science."
"The picture it builds is of a brilliant, garrulous and often exasperating individual ..."
"In his new biography of the Nobel prize-winning scientist, Matthew Cobb, emeritus professor of zoology at the University of Manchester, does an admirable job of capturing the rare thinker who not only set himself such ambitious goals but made remarkable progress in achieving them, radically remaking two scientific disciplines in the process ..."
"Sheds fresh light on the rivalry surrounding the discovery of DNA but also fleshes out Crick's other contributions ..."
"Readers will be captivated."
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