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Francis Crick Facts & Worksheets

Francis Crick was a British neuroscientist, biophysicist, and molecular biologist.

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Francis Crick was a British neuroscientist, biophysicist, and molecular biologist who worked with James Watson to publish an academic paper that proposed the double helix structure of DNA.

See the fact file below for more information on the Francis Crick or alternatively, you can download our 28-page Francis Crick worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE

  • Born on June 8, 1916 in Northampton, England, Francis Harry Compton Crick was the eldest child of Harry Crick and Annie Elizabeth Wilkins.
  • He was born into a middle-class family; his mother worked as a nurse while his father helped to manage their boot and shoe factory.
  • His aunt Ethel, a schoolteacher, taught him how to read.
  • He learned how to do chemical experiments, blow glass, and make photographic prints in the garden shed belonging to his uncle Walter, an amateur chemist.
  • At age 9, he enrolled at Northampton Grammar School. He showed interest in science and was very curious about the world and his surroundings.
  • His interest in science made him less believing of the Bible despite his parents being churchgoers. He reasoned that if some parts of the Bible were erratic, then the whole book was unreliable.
  • In 1930, Crick got a scholarship to Mill Hill School in London.
  • In 1934, he started studying at University College London (UCL). After three years, he got his degree in physics with mathematics, graduating with second class honors.
  • For his PhD research, he started a project measuring the viscosity of water at high temperatures but it was ruined when a WWII bomb fell through the roof of the laboratory where his apparatus was.
  • He was awarded the Carey Foster Research Prize in his second year as a PhD student.

CAREER

  • During the war, Crick stayed in London and got a job with the Royal Navy as a civilian researcher at the Admiralty Research Laboratory.
  • His work focused on magnetic and acoustic mines.
  • In 1947, he left the Admiralty and went to study biology out of interest in determining the three-dimensional structures of macromolecules in living organisms.
  • Francis Crick went to the University of Cambridge with studentship support from the Medical Research Council (MRC). He also worked at the Strangeways Research Laboratory while studying.
  • Upon learning that the MRC gave funds to biological molecule research at the Cavendish Laboratory of the same university, he transferred and started his third attempt to get a doctorate.
  • In 1949, Crick joined the research group headed by Max Perutz. He was primarily tasked with discovering the structure of hemoglobin using X-ray diffraction.
  • To do this, he studied the theory of X-ray crystallography and independently learned the complex mathematics needed to interpret X-ray patterns from diffraction and turn them into molecular structures.
  • Crick found out that he could mentally process a diffraction pattern and visualize the shape of the molecule without having to go through mathematical processes.
  • Two years into his doctoral, he met James Watson, a biologist, who became his close friend.
  • Watson was then looking for a research partner who knew about X-ray diffraction. He was determined to know how DNA transferred genetic instructions from parents to offspring and convinced Crick to work with him.
  • Scientists know that DNA contains pairs of amino acid bases: guanine (G), cytosine (C), adenine (A), and thymine (T).
  • Crick and Watson referred to data from the works of other scientists for their own research. In November 1951, they built a wire model of DNA with a triple helix structure. But their lack of knowledge in chemistry made the model a failure.
  • In February 1953, Crick learned that the 3D structure of a B-DNA is face-centered monoclinic, as shown in X-ray photos. Crick immediately realized that the space group of DNA was the same as that of horse hemoglobin.
  • He was able to visualize the DNA molecule’s symmetry: two helices forming a dyad. This meant that even when turned 180°, the structure would look the same. He knew, from the work of other scientists, that the double helix dyad supported the amino acid bases.
  • Watson, on the other hand, found out that A could only pair with T, and G could only pair with C. These pairings are made to be identical with each other by appropriate hydrogen bonding, making it possible for each base pair to fit anywhere into the double helix. Other base pairings were not possible.
  • On March 7, 1953, Crick finished piecing together an accurate scale model of DNA.
  • Crick and Watson submitted their paper to Nature, discussing their model, and it was published on April 25, 1953. In this paper, they mentioned other researchers and their work that the two found to be of great use in their own research. They also accredited help from Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins, and Jerry Donohue.
  • In May of the same year, Crick and Watson published another paper in Nature discussing DNA replication.
  • Crick and Watson’s discovery about the double helix structure of DNA was the greatest biological discovery of the 20th century.
  • In 1954, Crick received his PhD. He continued working at the Cavendish.
  • In 1958, he proposed that the sequence of the DNA bases (A-T-C-G) gave the instructions for building specific amino acid sequences in proteins. He discussed his findings about Sequence Hypothesis in the paper On Protein Synthesis.
  • He also predicted that an adaptor was involved in the transfer of information from DNA to protein. This was later discovered to be the transfer RNA.
  • Crick also proposed that information flows only from the DNA to protein. He called this the Central Dogma.
  • In 1961, he was able to prove his Sequence Hypothesis by working with Leslie Barnett and Sydney Brenner. He discovered that the genetic code is composed of three DNA bases providing the code for adding an amino acid in a protein.
  • In 1962, Francis Crick and James Watson, along with Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
  • Until 1976, Crick worked at the Cavendish. He moved to the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California at the age of 60 and held the post of J.W. Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor. He then himself learned about neuroscience and neuroanatomy.
  • He later investigated the brain and the consciousness, the second mystery that intrigued him greatly.
  • In 1983, Crick worked with Mitchison and suggested that the brain “unlearns” or reverse learns during REM sleep. REM sleep removes certain types of interactions in cell networks in the cerebral cortex.
  • Crick published his book What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery in 1988. He talked about insights in his most prominent works.
  • The Astonishing Hypothesis, published in 1994, is another book in which Crick discusses consciousness. He believed that consciousness is central to human existence.

DEATH AND LEGACY

  • Francis Crick died from colon cancer on July 28, 2004 at the age of 88.
  • He was cremated and had his ashes dispersed into the Pacific Ocean.
  • On September 27, 2004, he was given a public memorial at the Salk Institute where James Watson was one of the guest speakers. His family and colleagues also held a private memorial in August 2004.
  • The awards that Francis Crick for his research and discoveries are listed below:
    • Warren Triennial Prize Lecturer, 1959
    • Lasker Foundation Award, 1960
    • Prix Charles Leopold Meyer Award, 1961
    • Research Corporation Award, 1962
    • Award of Merit from the Gairdner Foundation, 1962
    • Royal Medal (1972) and Coley Medal (1975) from the Royal Society
      Order of Merit, 1991
  • He was also elected as a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Science in 1962. In the same year, he became a Fellow of University College, London.
  • In 1964, he was elected as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).
  • Crick was offered a knighthood, but turned it down because he did not like the idea of kings and queens.
  • Crick and Watson also received The Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences from the American Philosophical Society in 2001.
  • In 2003, the Francis Crick Medal and Lecture were established. The lecture is annually delivered in any biological science field, preferably in areas that Francis Crick worked on. It is aimed at younger scientists.
  • In 2016, the Francis Crick Institute in London was completed. It is the largest biomedical research and innovation center in Europe. The institute was built through the partnership of Imperial College London, University College London, King’s College London, Cancer Research UK, the Medical Research Council, and the Wellcome Trust.

Francis Crick Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about the Francis Crick across 28 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Francis Crick worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Francis Crick who was a British neuroscientist, biophysicist, and molecular biologist who worked with James Watson to publish an academic paper that proposed the double helix structure of DNA.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Nice to Meet You!
  • Years of Crick
  • Science Duty
  • Crick Connected
  • Union of Data
  • Helix Parts
  • One True Pair
  • DNA Science
  • Outside of Work
  • What’s Your Number?

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