Francis Crick

Professor Francis Harry Compton Crick, OM FRS (8 June, 1916 – 28 July, 2004) was a British physicist, molecular biologist and neuroscientist, most noted for being one of the co-

Reactions to Crick and his Work

Crick has widely been described as talkative, brash and lacking modesty. His personality combined with his scientific accomplishments produced many opportunities for Crick to stimulate reactions from others, both inside and outside of the scientific world that was the center of his intellectual and professional life. It has been suggested that he used small doses of L.S.D. to enhance his scientific discoveries but this has not been formally confirmed.

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Religious Beliefs

The conservative political analyst Mark Steyn published a pop psychoanalysis of Crick and an attempted deconstruction of Crick's scientific motivations{{ref|Steyn}}. Steyn characterized Crick as a militant atheist and asserted that it was his atheism that "drove" Crick to move beyond conventional molecular biology towards speculative topics such as panspermia. Styne described the theory of directed panspermia as amounting to, "gods in the skies who fertilise the earth and then retreat to the heavens beyond our reach." Styne categorized Crick?s ideas on directed panspermia as a result of "hyper-rationalism" that, "lead him round to embracing a belief in a celestial creator of human life, indeed a deus ex machina."

Related Topics:
Mark Steyn - Pop - Psychoanalysis - Deconstruction - Militant - Deus ex machina

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Styne's critique of Crick ignored the fact that Crick never held a belief in panspermia. Crick explored the hypothesis that it might be possible for life forms to be moved from one planet to another. What "drove" Crick towards speculation about directed panspermia was the difficulty of imagining how a complex system like a cell could arise under pre-biotic conditions from non-living chemical components. After ribozymes were discovered, Crick became much less interested panspermia because it was then much easier to imagine the pre-biotic origins of life as being made possible some set of simple self-replicating polymers.

Related Topics:
Cell - Ribozyme - Pre-biotic origins of life

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Drug Use

Rumors have circulated that Crick told a colleague that he had taken small doses of the hallucinogenic drug LSD at the time of the discovery of the structure of DNA in order to boost his deductive powers{{ref|hallucinogens}}. However, during his life, Crick was ready to sue anyone who put these rumors into print. Crick was a founding member of a group called SOMA, one of many organizations that has tried to prevent criminalization of cannabis use{{ref|cannabis}}.

Related Topics:
LSD - Cannabis

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