Crick and Watson shared a Nobel Prize with Maurice Wilkins. Wilkins' colleague Rosalind Franklin, whose X-rays provided the final proof of DNA is often forgotten. She died in 1958, and her death solved an awkward problem for the Nobel committee, since the Prize can only be split three ways and cannot be awarded posthumously
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2.3b RIDING HIGH ON A SPIRAL
2.3c Sunday Times, May 26, 1968
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James Watson went on to write a best-seller The Double Helix about the discovery that made Nobel Laureates of himself and Crick. The book was notable as much for its acidic insights into his partner's personality as for its scientific content
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2.4b THE STUFF OF LIFE ITSELF
24c Sunday Times, April 17, 1983
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30 years after Crick and Watson's discovery, scientists had successfully used their findings to develop new techniques in biotechnology. Their discovery had opened up a whole new scientific field: genetic engineering
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2.5b HARNESSING NATURAL HEALERS
2.5c Sunday Times, Jan 7, 1990
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The latest advances in genetic technology have created a multi-billion dollar industry that is striving to improve medicines, food and materials for industry. Tomorrow's brave new world will see a dramatic increase in the use of human genes to fight off disease
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2.6b MAKING BRAIN WAVES
2.6c The Times, July 26, 1985
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Crick left Britain for tax reasons, and continued his research in California. In perhaps his most ambitious project yet, he came up with some novel theories about the way the brain works
NUGGETS
3.1 Neither Crick nor Watson seemed at first sight to be suited to the work that brought them fame. Crick's early work was on X-ray crystallography, while Watson was a zoologist
3.2 Crick had still not completed his PhD at the age of 36
3.3 Crick was not a self-effacing man, and there was tension between the two. "I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood", wrote Watson in his best seller The Double Helix
3.4 Crick was known for his multipurpose refusal card which said "unable to accept your invitation to write a book, deliver a lecture, cure your diseases... etc"
3.5 Crick gained further notoriety when he stated that life on earth had not originated from a primordial soup, as was generally thought, but that it had arrived in an unmanned rocket carrying microbial spores sent by an advanced civilisation billions of years ago
3.6 DNA testing is now being used in experiments to track down wanted criminals