Francis Crick

1916 – 2004

Francis Harry Compton Crick was an English molecular biologist and biophysicist who, with James Watson, deduced the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953—drawing critically on the X-ray crystallography of Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. His subsequent work articulated the "central dogma" of molecular biology describing the flow of genetic information from DNA to RNA to protein, and helped decipher the genetic code. He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Watson and Wilkins, and devoted his later years to consciousness research at the Salk Institute.

Last checked: May 10, 2026, 1:06 PM