Ada Lovelace
94% Profile Match
Photo: Marc Lieberman, via Siegel RM and Callaway EM, PLoS Biology 2004, CC BY 2.5 · Wikimedia Commons, 'Francis Crick.png' -- photograph credited to Marc Lieberman showing Crick in his office with a brain model behind him; first published in Siegel and Callaway, PLoS Biology 2(12):e419 (2004), an open-access article under the Creative Commons Attribution licence; original Commons file 3000 x 2236 pixels (greyscale PNG), converted to JPEG and downscaled once to 1200 x 894 (never upscaled). · CC BY 2.5
biologist · 20th Century
Francis Crick
1916–2004
Known For
scientifichistorical
Not yet included in personality matching — the documented evidence doesn't yet cover enough of the personality model. Everything else on this page is fully available.
Trait Constellation
Key Achievements
In 1953 he and James Watson proposed the double-helix structure of DNA, whose paired bases suggested how genes are copied.
In 1955-58 he put forward the adaptor hypothesis, the sequence hypothesis and the central dogma of molecular biology, which set out how genetic information flows into proteins.
With Sydney Brenner and colleagues he showed in 1961 that three DNA bases code for one amino acid, and from 1977 he turned to the brain and consciousness at the Salk Institute.
Moments That Reveal Them
At a San Diego dinner in 1986 he sat Oliver Sacks beside him and said 'Tell me stories!', then answered each patient story with a burst of hypotheses and suggested investigations.
This is consistent with a scientist who treated other people's observations as raw material for new hypotheses. Curiosity
When transfer RNA was discovered, he did not believe it was the adaptor he had predicted, because it was larger than he expected, and insisted there would be twenty different adaptors.
This is consistent with holding to the specific form of his own prediction even when new evidence matched it only loosely, although later experiments confirmed adaptors and enzymes as he had foreseen. Belief Updating
Turning Points
In 1947 he left wartime Admiralty work in physics to study biology, at a time when, in the Nobel Foundation's wording, he knew no biology and practically no organic chemistry or crystallography.
This is consistent with a researcher willing to retrain from the beginning in a new field. Mastery Orientation
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Sources
- Francis Crick (Q123280) -- verified live via the Wikidata API (2026-10-10): English label 'Francis Crick', description 'British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA (1916-2004)', born 8 June 1916, died 28 July 2004, Korean label present. Orientation only; not used as support for any row.
- Nobel Foundation, 'Francis Crick - Biographical', Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962 (nobelprize.org; text written at the time of the award) -- institutional career record: physics degree, wartime Admiralty mine work, the 1947 move to biology with, in the text's words, no biology and practically no organic chemistry or crystallography, the helix diffraction theory, the 1953 DNA structure, and the later adaptor hypothesis and genetic-code work with Brenner. Work record only; family paragraph not used. Read in full.
- U.S. National Library of Medicine, Profiles in Science: Francis Crick Papers -- three scholarly essays: 'The Discovery of the Double Helix, 1951-1953', 'Defining the Genetic Coding Problem, 1954-1957' and 'From Molecular Biology to Neurobiology, 1976-2004'. INDEPENDENT institutional archive narrative drawing on the papers; includes the adaptor hypothesis circulated in the RNA Tie Club, the central dogma, the move to the Salk Institute, his stated skepticism of behaviorist approaches, his own admission that he had not produced a novel convincing theory in neurobiology, and the controversy over the use of Rosalind Franklin's data. Read in full; the 'Deciphering the Genetic Code' and 'Embryology' essays were not opened.
- Koji Tamura, 'The Genetic Code: Francis Crick's Legacy and Beyond', editorial, Life (Basel) 6(3):36, 25 August 2016 (open access via PubMed Central) -- scholarly centenary editorial by a tRNA researcher. Describes his collaborations with Watson, Brenner, Orgel and Koch, his adaptor hypothesis and central dogma, his initial refusal to accept that tRNA was the adaptor because of its size, the 1961 triplet-code paper, and his 'frozen accident' view with room left for stereochemical interactions. Admiring in tone but specific and dated; Tamura's cited quotations of others (the 'conductor' and 'nuclear reactor' phrases) were used only where the original source was also read. Read in full.
- Oliver Sacks, 'Remembering Francis Crick', The New York Review of Books, 24 March 2005 -- PEER witness and correspondent: a neurologist's first-hand account of Crick's 1962 talk on the triplet code, a 1986 dinner at which Crick demanded stories and generated hypotheses from each, and a 1987-88 exchange of long, prompt, detailed letters on a colour-blind patient, in which Crick consulted other vision scientists and pushed for scans and psychophysics. Admiring; used for dated, concrete scenes only. Read in full to the point of the letters; the final sections were skimmed.
- Matthew Cobb and Nathaniel Comfort, 'What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA's structure', Nature, 25 April 2023 -- INDEPENDENT modern historians (each writing a biography, Cobb of Crick) re-examining the 1953 discovery from Franklin's archive and Crick's own notes and interviews. Reports that Watson and Crick solved the structure by six weeks of trial-and-error model building and then used the King's College data, without permission, to confirm it; that Crick said he was glad he had not seen Franklin's data earlier; and that Franklin worked without a peer to exchange ideas with. Used as a counter-balance to the popular account, and for his working method. Read in full to the section on what Franklin did; the closing paragraphs were skimmed.
- Helen Pilcher, 'Francis Crick', Nature News, 29 July 2004 (reprinted by BioEd Online, Baylor College of Medicine) -- obituary report noting his switch from physics to biology after the war, the 1962 Nobel Prize shared with Watson and Wilkins, his work on the genetic code, and his turn to consciousness at the Salk Institute, where he championed the idea that aspects of consciousness correlate with specific brain changes. A tribute quote from Watson is in the piece and was not used. Read in full.
- Siegel RM and Callaway EM, 'Francis Crick's Legacy for Neuroscience: Between the alpha and the Omega', PLoS Biology 2(12):e419, 2004 (open access, CC BY) -- the publication in which the portrait photograph (credited to Marc Lieberman) appeared; used only to check the portrait's licence and credit. Not used for scoring.