Slashdot Mirror
DNA Pioneer Francis Crick Passes Away
Neil Halelamien writes "Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA with James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, and Maurice Wilkins, passed away Wednesday in San Diego. His co-discovery of 'the secret of life' made him one of the most influential scientists of all time. In more recent years, he shifted his research efforts from molecular biology to neuroscience, with a particular interest in the question of the neural basis of consciousness."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I would like to take this moment to recommend Francis Crick's The Astonishing Hypothesis to anyone interested in cognitive science. Although the theory of consciousness he espouses is somewhat uninteresting, the book does provide a good overview of the mechanisms by which the human brain functions, and it also describes the field of Cog Sci to some depth.
Whatever it is I'm complaining about, I'm sure the Republicans did it. This is
I rebooted a work machine that was named crick, after I heard. I figure that's like pouring a forty out on the pavement, right?
(also it needed a kernel update)
My understanding is that they didn't use any of their own raw data, but the data from Rosalind Franklin. More info.
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
Sort of. I squirted 70% ethanol on the lab floor.
They got the Nobel Prize for their discovery. She wasn't included in the prize, even though she was critical in the discovery of the molecule's structure.
Only living people can get the Nobel, and by the time of the prize, Rosie had died of cancer. There's no conspiracy.
His co-discovery of 'the secret of life' made him one of the most influential scientists of all time. In more recent years, he shifted his research efforts from molecular biology to neuroscience, with a particular interest in the question of the neural basis of consciousness.
In the middle of the 20th century:
Crick: We've done it! We've figured out how life's essence can be boiled down to simple chemical reactions!
God: Aw, crap. Didn't mean for them to figure that out.
Fast forward to the present day:
Crick: That's it! It's so simple, how could I have missed it before! I've figured out how the soul's essence can be boiled down to simple neural combinations!
God: Alright, boy, you've gone far enough. [Flips switch]
Crick: Aaaah! [Hits floor]
According to the NY Times there were no hard feelings between her and Crick.
Read this section:
One of the problems caused by the book was Dr. Watson's implication that the pair of them had obtained Dr. Franklin's data on DNA surreptitiously and hence had deprived her of due credit for the DNA discovery. Dr. Crick believed he obtained the data fairly since she had presented it at a public lecture, to which he had been invited. Though Dr. Watson had misreported a vital figure from the lecture, a correct version reached Dr. Crick through the Medical Research Council report. If Dr. Franklin felt Dr. Crick had treated her unfairly, she never gave any sign of it. She became friends with both Dr. Crick and Dr. Watson, and spent her last remission from cancer in Dr. Crick's house.
Hardly the miscredited dark lady some people claim her to be.
We had some fabulous conversations about the nature of consciousness last summer in La Jolla, and he went on for hours and hours about the work his friend Christoff Koch was doing at Caltech - but the conversation was never about taking credit for ideas or who did what.
Wilkins went behind Rosalind Franklin's back and gave copies of her image data to James Watson. I don't believe that Crick even knew that he was looking at data without her permission. Regardless, he isn't the type of person to deny the credit she was due, nor to be shy about the fact that it was mostly he who deciphered the X-ray diffraction images. He was beyond uninterested in the politics side of science.
Like Dr. Crick, I studied physics and once thought I wanted to be a physicist. We discussed this, and I explained my reasons for not pursuing graduate studies these days, due to the excessive politics involved and the nature of funding, being beholden to a professor's interests and so on. And he agreed that if he were graduating from college today, he might feel the same way.
As for the "right bastard" part, like many scientists, and lots of people on Slashdot too, Dr. Crick was no social genius. He liked socializing with academics and people who would talk about ideas with him. But he always seemed to be a very decent person to me.
A post on iPods elicits 500+ comments.
A post on a pioneer of DNA research: under 200.
Let's hope the next generation of iPod can cure cancer, or we're all fucked.