Francis Crick
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Eminent Lives - Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘In this excellent first biography of Francis Crick, who died in 2004, the suspense is terrific…authoritative…lucid…he captures Crick's audacity, brilliance and, not least, eloquence.’ Sunday Times
‘From the pages of this biography Crick emerges as a powerful, dominating figure who ruled seminars and parties with equal ease, and Ridley, an experienced science writer, with a neat turn of phrase and a proper appreciation of brevity can be satisfied he has done justice to his subject. His book has pace, concisenness and wit…the book is a delight.’ The Observer
'Ridley explains his discoveries with wonderful clarity.' Telegraph Review
Praise for Matt Ridley:
‘What a superb writer he is, and he seems to get better and better.' Richard Dawkins, author of ‘The Selfish Gene’
The Observer
'His book has pace, concisenness and wit...the book is a
delight.'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
delight.'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
If anything typified Francis Crick's work style, it was his quest for cooperation. The "Watson-Crick" team has so dominated the literature of DNA research, that a view of Crick as an individual is a rare sight. Matt Ridley has admirably filled in that lack with this view of the Nobel Laureate's life. In a brief, but insightful, and superbly written account, the biographer has filled in many details of a scientist, a theoriser and, most significantly, a man of unquenchable curiosity.
If any one term can typify Crick's personality, it was his outgoing nature. One of the more famous sentences in science writing is Jim Watson's announcement that he'd never seen Crick in "a modest mood". Although the remark irritated Crick, it did summarise many aspects of his nature in both work and personal relationships. Crick was immensely curious about nearly everything, and once he'd tackled a problem stayed doggingly with it. He was dismissive of "fuzzy logic", demanding much from his associates and co-workers - and demanding it constantly. As Ridley frequently points out, while this may have irritated many, the results were rewarding. Ridley subtitles the book "The Discoverer of the Genetic Code" due to Crick's persistance, even "bootlegging" time to accomplish the joint find through a model Crick built. Crick later went on to work on the "purpose" of DNA and its relation to protein production, something fundamental to life.
Ridley traces Crick's early life and his career during WWII. He was a late arrival in academia, standing out among his fellows both in physical stature and age. He enjoyed the banter with professors and fellow students, although his braying laugh left some disaffected. The proper people perceived the towering strength of his mind, however, and encouraged his pursuits, although sometimes on a short leash. Some of that outgoing nature likely brought about his first marriage, and just as likely was the cause of its later dissolution. It certainly led to his second wife, Odile, but this time cemented the match for decades.
Crick's noteriety derived from the DNA discovery brought numerous offers for positions, but it was the British Internal Revenue policies that led him to the United States. There, he launched many new investigations. Among these was life's origins, a topic that had long fascinated him. Crick had difficulty with the notion that life simply emerged from chemical reactions. He suggested that life on Earth had been "seeded" in bacterial form by distant alien civilisations intent on preserving their genetic formulas. A later collaboration with Christof Koch resulted in "The Astonishing Hypothesis", a work on human consciousness.
Ridley spends a chapter on "the book"; James Watson's highly personalised account of the DNA discovery. It was an irritant to Crick, not only because he was dealt with frankly by "Honest Jim" [which was the book's original title!], but because while Crick may have been informal in his lifestyle, he considered anything "frivolous" dealing with science was inappropriate. Watson's final publication, "The Double Helix" was a smash hit, prompting other scientists to explain their work in personal terms. What Watson did for himself was left for Ridley to produce for Francis Crick. Both men were giants in many ways, and Ridley elevates Crick to the heights generally reserved for names like Galileo or Darwin. The assessment is neither misplaced or overblown. Francis Crick will be difficult to replace. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
If any one term can typify Crick's personality, it was his outgoing nature. One of the more famous sentences in science writing is Jim Watson's announcement that he'd never seen Crick in "a modest mood". Although the remark irritated Crick, it did summarise many aspects of his nature in both work and personal relationships. Crick was immensely curious about nearly everything, and once he'd tackled a problem stayed doggingly with it. He was dismissive of "fuzzy logic", demanding much from his associates and co-workers - and demanding it constantly. As Ridley frequently points out, while this may have irritated many, the results were rewarding. Ridley subtitles the book "The Discoverer of the Genetic Code" due to Crick's persistance, even "bootlegging" time to accomplish the joint find through a model Crick built. Crick later went on to work on the "purpose" of DNA and its relation to protein production, something fundamental to life.
Ridley traces Crick's early life and his career during WWII. He was a late arrival in academia, standing out among his fellows both in physical stature and age. He enjoyed the banter with professors and fellow students, although his braying laugh left some disaffected. The proper people perceived the towering strength of his mind, however, and encouraged his pursuits, although sometimes on a short leash. Some of that outgoing nature likely brought about his first marriage, and just as likely was the cause of its later dissolution. It certainly led to his second wife, Odile, but this time cemented the match for decades.
Crick's noteriety derived from the DNA discovery brought numerous offers for positions, but it was the British Internal Revenue policies that led him to the United States. There, he launched many new investigations. Among these was life's origins, a topic that had long fascinated him. Crick had difficulty with the notion that life simply emerged from chemical reactions. He suggested that life on Earth had been "seeded" in bacterial form by distant alien civilisations intent on preserving their genetic formulas. A later collaboration with Christof Koch resulted in "The Astonishing Hypothesis", a work on human consciousness.
Ridley spends a chapter on "the book"; James Watson's highly personalised account of the DNA discovery. It was an irritant to Crick, not only because he was dealt with frankly by "Honest Jim" [which was the book's original title!], but because while Crick may have been informal in his lifestyle, he considered anything "frivolous" dealing with science was inappropriate. Watson's final publication, "The Double Helix" was a smash hit, prompting other scientists to explain their work in personal terms. What Watson did for himself was left for Ridley to produce for Francis Crick. Both men were giants in many ways, and Ridley elevates Crick to the heights generally reserved for names like Galileo or Darwin. The assessment is neither misplaced or overblown. Francis Crick will be difficult to replace. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a short biography, but also very concise. If one were to remove from it everything that was not directly relevant to giving a picture of Crick and his achievements, the thing would be no more than a paragraph shorter. It's a fact-packed, straight-to-the-point account, and is all the more interesting for that.
We learn of Crick's war work on mines, his early forarys into protein structures, the fateful partnership with Watson, his 'ringmaster' role in the later unravelling of the genetic code, his dalliance with embryology and his final years delving into neuroscience. We get to know him as garrulous, hard-working, blunt, irritating, endlessly curious, diligently assimilating, bursting with ideas, easily drawn into conflict but readily reconciling later. We see how throughout his career he relied on bouncing ideas off an equally bright foil: Watson, Brenner, Koch...
Whilst there is interest on every page, the middle section of the book, detailing the years spent bringing about the decoding of genetic triplets, is positively thrilling. No doubt there will be longer biographies of Crick, but this one reads like the distilled essence of a life. Great stuff.
We learn of Crick's war work on mines, his early forarys into protein structures, the fateful partnership with Watson, his 'ringmaster' role in the later unravelling of the genetic code, his dalliance with embryology and his final years delving into neuroscience. We get to know him as garrulous, hard-working, blunt, irritating, endlessly curious, diligently assimilating, bursting with ideas, easily drawn into conflict but readily reconciling later. We see how throughout his career he relied on bouncing ideas off an equally bright foil: Watson, Brenner, Koch...
Whilst there is interest on every page, the middle section of the book, detailing the years spent bringing about the decoding of genetic triplets, is positively thrilling. No doubt there will be longer biographies of Crick, but this one reads like the distilled essence of a life. Great stuff.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A very good read and an important book. One thinks of Crick arriving late in his thirties, cracking the big one and entering the history books. How exciting to discover how far and deeply he personally developed the original idea, at the forefront, for decades. Sounds like a good bloke, too.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192198663_.gif){kind=small}
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Biography > Science, Mathematics & Technology > Engineering
- Books > Biography > Science, Mathematics & Technology > Science
- Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Biochemistry
- Books > Science & Nature > Biological Sciences > Genetics > DNA
- Books > Science & Nature > Popular Science > Genetics
- Books > Scientific, Technical & Medical
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
