Francis Crick (1916-2004)

Born on June 16th,1916, in Northampton, England.

In 1947, he began his Ph.D. work at the Strangeways Laboratory, Cambridge, with Arthur Hughes. There Crick and Hughes studied the physical properties of cytoplasm in the cultured fibroblast cells.
Two years later he joined the Medical Research Unit at Cavendish Laboratory where Crick worked with Max Perutz and John Kerdrew on protein structure. He ended up doing his Ph.D. work on x-ray diffraction of proteins.

After the war he tried to construct a physical model of the DNA together with James Watson. Based on X-ray diffraction data Watson and Crick believed the model had to be helical. Watson and Crick got a much needed clue upon reading Chargaff's paper on one-to-one adenine to thymine and cytosine to guanine ratios.
In 1953, after a brainstorm by James Watson they published a paper proposing at the DNA molecule had double helical structure.
After his discovery of the double helix, Crick went to work on finding the relationship between DNA and genetic coding. During this study with Vernon Ingram, they discovered the function of the genetic material in determining the specificity of proteins.
In 1960 Crick began to study the structure and possible functions of certain proteins associated with chromosomes called histones.
In 1962 Crick, James Watson, and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for this discovery, which was subsequently verified experimentally.

Crick finally left Cambridge Laboratories in 1976 to become Kieckhefer Professor at Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California. It was there that Crick began his present project of the study of the brain.

Died on July 29th 2004 in San Diego, USA.