Crick, Francis Harry Compton (1916-2004)

English molecular biologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1962, together with Maurice Wilkins and James Watson, for the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA and of the significance of this structure in the replication and transfer of genetic information.

Using Wilkins's and others' discoveries, Crick and Watson postulated that DNA consists of a double helix consisting of two parallel chains of alternate sugar and phosphate groups linked by pairs of organic bases. They built molecular models which also explained how genetic information could be coded - in the sequence of organic bases. Crick and Watson published their work on the proposed structure of DNA in 1953. Their model is now generally accepted as correct.

Crick was born in Northampton and studied physics at University College, London. During World War II he worked on the development of radar. He then went to do biological research at Cambridge. In 1977 he became a professor at the Salk Institute in San Diego, California.

Later, this time working with South African Sidney Brenner, Crick demonstrated that each group of three adjacent bases (he called a set of three bases a codon) on a single DNA strand codes for one specific amino acid. He also helped to determine codons that code for each of the 20 main amino acids. Furthermore, he formulated the adaptor hypothesis, according to which adaptor molecules mediate between messenger RNA and amino acids. These adaptor molecules are now known as transfer RNAs.

Among his sometimes controversial writings were Of Molecules and Men (1966), Life Itself (1982), What Mad Pursuit (1988), and The Astonishing Hypothesis (1994).