During his second year as a PhD student, however, he was awarded the Carey Foster Research Prize, a great honour. He was also an Honorary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, and of University College, London.Ĭrick began a PhD research project on measuring the viscosity of water at high temperatures (which he later described as "the dullest problem imaginable" ) in the laboratory of physicist Edward Neville da Costa Andrade at University College London, but with the outbreak of World War II (in particular, an incident during the Battle of Britain when a bomb fell through the roof of the laboratory and destroyed his experimental apparatus), Crick was deflected from a possible career in physics. He later became a PhD student and Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and mainly worked at the Cavendish Laboratory and the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Crick began a PhD at UCL, but was interrupted by World War II. He declared that his success was founded on the quality of teaching he received whilst a pupil at Mill Hill.Ĭrick studied at University College London (UCL), a constituent college of the University of London and earned a Bachelor of Science degree awarded by the University of London in 1937. He shared the Walter Knox Prize for Chemistry on Mill Hill School's Foundation Day, Friday, 7 July 1933. After the age of 14, he was educated at Mill Hill School in London (on a scholarship), where he studied mathematics, physics, and chemistry with his best friend John Shilston. The teaching in the higher forms was satisfactory, but not as stimulating. This was about 1.25 mi (2 km) from his home so he could walk there and back, by Park Avenue South and Abington Park Crescent, but he more often went by bus or, later, by bicycle. When he was eight or nine he transferred to the most junior form of the Northampton Grammar School, on the Billing Road. Walter Crick, his uncle, lived in a small house on the south side of Abington Avenue he had a shed at the bottom of his little garden where he taught Crick to blow glass, do chemical experiments and to make photographic prints. But by about age 12, he said he did not want to go any more as he preferred a scientific search for answers over religious belief. As a child, he was taken to church by his parents. His grandfather, Walter Drawbridge Crick, an amateur naturalist, wrote a survey of local foraminifera (single-celled protists with shells), corresponded with Charles Darwin, and had two gastropods (snails or slugs) named after him.Īt an early age, Francis was attracted to science and what he could learn about it from books. He was born on 8 June 1916 and raised in Weston Favell, then a small village near the English town of Northampton, in which Crick's father and uncle ran the family's boot and shoe factory. Early life and education Ĭrick was the first son of Harry Crick and Annie Elizabeth Crick (née Wilkins). He remained in this post until his death "he was editing a manuscript on his death bed, a scientist until the bitter end" according to Christof Koch. His later research centered on theoretical neurobiology and attempts to advance the scientific study of human consciousness. Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. ĭuring the remainder of his career, he held the post of J.W. In other words, the final step in the flow of information from nucleic acids to proteins is irreversible. He is widely known for the use of the term " central dogma" to summarise the idea that once information is transferred from nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) to proteins, it cannot flow back to nucleic acids. Ĭrick was an important theoretical molecular biologist and played a crucial role in research related to revealing the helical structure of DNA. Together with Maurice Wilkins, they were jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". Crick and Watson's paper in Nature in 1953 laid the groundwork for understanding DNA structure and functions. He, James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins played crucial roles in deciphering the helical structure of the DNA molecule. Polypeptides and proteins: X-ray studies (1954)įrancis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004) was an English molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist.
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