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Working in Cambridge, James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helix in early 1953, while Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin, researchers at King’s College London, were also trying to crack the structure. Franklin was about to leave King’s and DNA work all together, while Wilkins was preparing to focus his mind more closely on the problem once Franklin left. It’s widely believed that Watson and Crick stole Franklin’s data and that this enabled them to make their breakthrough.
The idea can be traced back to Watson’s page-turning but unreliable memoir, The Double Helix, in which he describes seeing X-ray diffraction images at King’s in January 1953 and feeling excited about them. He does not say who made those images (although he does say that Wilkins had been repeating some of Franklin’s observations), but most people believe that this was one of Franklin’s images despite a lack of reliable evidence for this. Even if the image had been so decisive, surely Franklin—an expert—would have realized this herself.
With Nathaniel Comfort (who is writing a biography of Watson), I discovered that in January 1953, Franklin suggested Crick talk to a colleague, who had an informal report of the work she and Wilkins were doing at King’s, if he wanted to learn more about her findings. There is no indication that she was concerned about sharing her results.
Interviews with Crick from the 1960s and a close reading of the Watson and Crick research papers show that the actual process of making the breakthrough did not involve using any of Franklin’s data. Instead, the pair spent a month fiddling about with cardboard shapes corresponding to the component molecules of DNA, using the basic rules of chemistry. Once they had finally, almost by accident, made the discovery, then they could see that it corresponded to Franklin’s data.
Franklin was not hostile to the pair—she continued to share her data and ideas with both men and subsequently became very close friends with Crick and his wife, Odile. She regularly stayed at their Cambridge home, went to their notorious parties and went to the theatre with Odile. Later, after her cancer diagnosis, she convalesced with the Cricks, twice. There are some charming letters from Odile that I quote in the book, describing their friendship.
In 1947, Crick set out his twin ambitions—to understand the nature of life, and of the human brain. With his work on molecular biology, he made huge strides toward achieving that first ambition; in 1977 Crick settled in California, working at the Salk Institute, with the aim of understanding consciousness. Although he made no single decisive breakthrough—we still do not understand how consciousness works—he played a decisive role in creating modern neuroscience.
First, he used his reputation and influence to argue for a focus on precise anatomy—the origin of today’s huge projects to map animal brains and, eventually, the human brain.
If the image had been so decisive, surely Franklin would have realized this herself.
Then, in the 1980s he was closely involved with the cognitive scientists and computer scientists who developed something called Parallel Distributed Processing—the distant precursor of today’s AI systems. He argued for fusing computer models of behaviour with precise anatomical knowledge to gain insight into how nervous systems work, and collaborated closely with AI pioneers Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield, who in 2024 shared the Nobel Prize for their work.
Above all, working with Christof Koch, he set out a materialist approach for investigating consciousness—much of today’s interest in the topic can be traced back to Crick’s pioneering advocacy and insight.
Although this contribution has largely been forgotten, before the turn of the millennia, his role was widely recognized. He regularly published articles and think-pieces in Nature, the leading scientific journal, and in 1994 he wrote a hugely successful popular book about his ideas, The Astonishing Hypothesis, which helped to shape the thinking of both scientists and the public about the nature of consciousness.
One aspect of Crick’s life that even his close collaborators did not know of was his fascination with poetry. He even tried his hand at writing verse—some of it was dreadful, but other attempts, quoted in my book, were pretty good.
His closest relationship with poetry came with the work of Michael McClure. In 1959, Crick bought a copy of one of McClure’s early works—Peyote Poem—in City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco. This described the psychedelic effects of chewing peyote; Crick did not know what this was, but he was struck by McClure’s writing and pinned the long poem in the hall of his Cambridge home.
In the early 1970s, he got a chance to meet McClure, who was by now quite well known—“the Prince of the San Francisco poetry scene,” said one observer—and the two struck up a close friendship (Crick had also experimented with LSD by this point). McClure would send Crick early versions of his poems and his essays; Crick would give his opinion, which McClure sometimes accepted, changing his work as a result. Their letters—scattered in archives around the world—reveal an intimate and unusual friendship.
For the next three decades the two men exchanged visits and letters, which reveal an emotionally charged, subjective side to Crick that might seem to contradict his materialist approach to science. But, in fact, his approach to science was not strictly logical, but full of fun and sudden, intuitive glimpses into facets of reality that were previously hidden. Understanding his interest in poetry, and in McClure’s work in particular, sheds light on Crick’s character and on his science. 
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Lead image: Maryna Olyak / Shutterstock
