Matthew’s biography of Francis Crick just came out, and I’m delighted, as I’m sure he is, with the spate of glowing reviews. I haven’t seen a bad one yet, and some of them rate the book as superlative. It is certainly one of the best science biographies going, and I hope it wins the Royal Society Science book prize.
I’ll finish up my endorsements of the book (the reviews will keep coming, though) by highlighting two more: one in Science and the other in the Times of London. But first you can listen to Matthew talking about J. D. Watson, who just died, on this BBC show (Matthew’s bit, which is the only discussion of biology, goes from the beginning to 9:35). As Matthew says, “This is the most important discovery in biology since Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. It transforms our understanding of heredity, of evolution–of everything to do with biology.”
The American you hear in the interview is from an old interview with Watson himself.
The moderator then wants to discuss the sexism and racism of Watson, and Matthew eventually gets to it. First, though, Matthew discusses the involvement of Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin in the DNA structure, and says, as he always does, that the history was complicated, that the discovery was more collaborative than people think, but also that Crick and Watson failed to ask Franklin for permission to use her data, which was a scientific boo-boo. Watson’s further accomplishments are discussed (the Human Genome Project, the upgrading of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories). The mention of Watson’s personal arrogance, sexism, and racism starts at 6:50, and Matthew manages to decry it (calling it a “terrible legacy”) while not seeming nasty, something he’s good at.
Next, two reviews, the first in Science. It’s very positive, and I’ll give the exerpts (access should be free by clicking on the headline below).
In October 1958, Francis Crick and his wife, Odile, hosted a party at their house in Cambridge to celebrate Fred Sanger’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. During the festivities, a rocket was launched from the roof terrace, which landed on the roof of a nearby church and necessitated the services of the local fire brigade (1). This otherwise inconsequential event is an apt metaphor for the scientific assault on mysticism and vitalism that the atheist Crick and his contemporaries helped pioneer through their pursuit of a new “chemical physics” of biology—an endeavor that would eventually help describe the nature of life itself. In his magnificent and expansive new biography, Crick: A Mind in Motion, Matthew Cobb forensically explores and electrifies this important chapter in the history of science through the exploits of one of its key protagonists.
Another intriguing theme Cobb explores is Crick’s friendship with the psychedelic beat poet Michael McClure (6). Crick was so taken by the charismatic poet, in particular, a stanza in McClure’s “Peyote Poem”—“THIS IS THE POWERFUL KNOWLEDGE / we smile with it”—that he pinned it onto a wall in his home. For Crick, the beauty inherent in the solution of a complex scientific problem and the aesthetic euphoria and sense of revelation it created were reminiscent of the perceptual effects of consuming a hallucinogenic compound, such as peyote.
Cobb also touches on Crick’s eugenicist proclamations and details some of his other disastrous forays into the social implications of science, which ultimately led him to permanently abstain from such activities. Crick’s notable lack of engagement with the 1975 Asilomar meeting, which sought to address the potential biohazards and ethics of recombinant DNA technology, was in stark contrast to Watson and biologist Sydney Brenner. Crick never explained his silence on the topic of genetic engineering (7).
Complex, energetic, freethinking, dazzling, and bohemian, Crick was also ruthless, immature, misogynistic, arrogant, and careless. The phage biologist Seymour Benzer noted that Crick was not a “shrinking violet.” Maurice Wilkins described Watson and Crick as “a couple of old rogues,” and Lawrence Bragg more politely observed that Crick was “the sort of chap who was always doing someone else’s crossword.” Cobb, however, has arrived at a somewhat more benign and nuanced interpretation of the events surrounding the discovery of the double helix, the collaborative nature of which, he asserts, was obfuscated by the fictional narrative drama of Watson’s bestseller The Double Helix.
Crick is set to become the definitive account of this polymath’s life and work. We must now wait patiently for historian Nathaniel Comfort’s upcoming biography of James Watson to complement it.
In my view, the phrase “definite account of this polymath’s life and work” is really the most powerful approbation the book could get.
You can see the review from the Times of London by clicking below, or find it archived here:
If the age of the lone scientific genius has passed, was Francis Crick among its last great specimens? His name will for ever be bound to that of James Watson and their discovery in 1953 of the double-helix structure of DNA. Yet it is a measure of Crick’s influence that this breakthrough, transformative as it was, is done and dusted barely 80 pages into Matthew Cobb’s absorbing new biography.
Cobb, a zoologist and historian of science, presents Crick (1916-2004) as the hub round which a mid-century scientific revolution revolved — a researcher and theorist of unstoppable curiosity, who unravelled the secret code behind heredity before helping to reinvent the study of the mind and consciousness. More than 70 years on, it is easy to forget how penetrating Crick’s insights were — how, before he came along, we did not know how life copies itself and the molecular mechanism behind evolution was a mystery.
But Cobb’s book is no hagiography. Briskly paced, it concentrates on Crick’s scientific life, but also offers glimpses, some unflattering, of the man behind the lab bench. The picture it builds is of a brilliant, garrulous and often exasperating individual.
. . . Cobb writes with clarity and a touch of affection for his subject. His Crick is radical in science and conservative in temperament; deeply irreligious yet moved by poetry; a philanderer who adored his wife. Above all he is insatiably curious — a mind in motion, indeed. And yes, he may also represent something that may now be lost: the era when a single intellect could sit at the centre of a scientific revolution. Crick might be best known for his collaboration with Watson and his notorious debt to Franklin. However, in the crowded, collaborative landscape of 21st-century research, where knowledge advances by increments, achieved by vast teams who work with ever growing volumes of data, it is hard to imagine another individual whose ideas will so completely redefine the life sciences.
I’d call that a good review as well. Kudos to Dr. Cobb. I told him he should celebrate by going off on a nice vacation, but I’m betting he won’t.
I think it says something about the empirical sciences – that the mind can even venture out on a hallucinogenic trip – but even a psychedelically-induced theory just needs to fit the material evidence reproducibly. It’s all that matters. (For mathematics, a wastebasket will suffice).
Excellent news, I’m waiting for a copy to arrive!
The BBC interviewer is calling Watson “racist” and “hateful” and saying that The Bell Curve is “discredited”. (This is the same BBC that is happy to refer to a male rapist as “she”, if that’s how he identifies.)
OK, so Watson completely lacked tact, but is there anything he said on the topic that cannot be defended as being a fair assessment of the evidence? Just because it is heresy doesn’t mean it is wrong.
It’s also worth remarking that Francis Crick seems to have thought much the same thing, for example in a 1971 letter:
“Unlike you and your colleagues I have formed the opinion that there is much substance to Jensen’s arguments. In brief I think it likely that more than half the difference between the average I.Q. of American whites and Negroes is due to genetic reasons, and will not be eliminated by any foreseeable change in the environment.”
The difference is perhaps that Crick had the good sense not to say this out loud in a newspaper interview, and to die before the BLM era made saying it a cancellable offence.
A bit like Galton, the infamous eugenicist who the nice Mr Darwin basically agreed with. Thought that to myself walking past the Francis Crick Institute.
Looking forward to starting the book. I have about 100 pages to go in the book I’m reading now. Then it’s on to Matthew’s book!
I’m curious about what, if any, recognition Rosalind Franklin would have received if she’d still been alive in 1962. Might she have edged out Wilkins for the number three spot on the Nobel?
I love the covers for this book, too.
Matthew has suggested, and I agree with him, that Watson and Crick could have shared the Nobel for Medicine or Physiology, and Wilkins and Franklin could have shared the Nobel for Chemistry. That seems to me an appropriate and fair outcome, but alas, Franklin was not alive.
Congratulations, Dr Cobb on the fabulous reviews! I’m waiting patiently for my copy.