Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code
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《新英格兰医药杂志》
As a child, Francis Crick was afraid that there would be nothing left for him to discover when he was an adult. In his book, Francis Crick, Matt Ridley shows us how wrong Crick was. We read of Crick's years at the Admiralty Research Laboratory during World War II; of his "high-pitch laugh, more like a bray"; of his experiences with LSD in the 1970s; and of his belief that differences in IQ between blacks and whites have a genetic, not social, basis. We read less about Crick's late interest in the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin of life but, understandably, find many pages about his association with James Watson. In 213 dense pages, Ridley gives us a portrait of the man who is credited with one of the crucial discoveries of 20th-century science — the structure of DNA, with its implication, the semiconservative mode of replication. Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. Rosalind Franklin, who pioneered the x-ray diffraction study of macromolecules and played a crucial role in those discoveries in many ways, had died in 1958.
(Figure)
Francis Crick in Paris, 1993.
Daniel Mordzinski/AFP/Getty Images.
The story of the discovery of the structure of DNA has been told many times. Readers familiar with Watson's famous book, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (New York: Touchstone, 1968; reissued in 2001) — which Crick heartily disliked — may not find Ridley's story equally entertaining. In fact, the two books could hardly be more different. Watson's book starts with a line that has become famous — "I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood" — and proceeds accordingly. Ridley chooses a different key, focusing more on scientific issues than on personality conflicts. His lack of sympathy for anyone who got in Crick's way is apparent, but the emphasis is on the not-so-linear path that led to the double-helix model and on the causes, rather than the manifestations, of the sore conflict between Watson and Crick in the late 1960s. The writing is punctuated by vivid, typically Crickian quotations, such as: "This may be true, but there does not appear to be any evidence for it."
If the reader is not looking for sophisticated literary pleasures, this well-documented book does its job. The slow process through which scientific ideas take shape — how they are tested, rejected, and refined — is well described, and technical terms are clearly explained, so that even nonexperts can easily go through these pages. I see two problems with the book, though. One is the wording of the title. Three chapters describe how Crick, after his main discovery, participated in the effort to understand the rules whereby the information contained in DNA is translated into protein. He was so fascinated by this new challenge that he chose the genetic code as the subject of his Nobel Prize lecture. However, it was H. Gobind Khorana, Marshall W. Nirenberg, and Robert W. Holley who earned the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for discovering the genetic code and elucidating its function. Calling Crick the "discoverer of the double helix" would have made for a more appropriate title and done no harm to his reputation.
The second problem I found with this book, aptly published in a series on eminent lives, is that a biography is probably the most difficult way to tell the story of such a complex, multilayered, and controversial process as the quest for the code of life. There is little in this book about other scientists — such as Franklin, Khorana, and Nirenberg — who, from a broad perspective, would be all but secondary characters in the play. Alas, biography is a tricky literary genre, barely less so than autobiography. With just a few laudable exceptions, biographies tend to be one-sided, and this one is no exception. At the end of the book, we are left with the idea that Francis Crick's life was essentially a linear process: there are hesitations and even failures at the beginning, he does not find the right wife or the right job right away, but there is a turning point after which success becomes inevitable, and then the previous vagaries prove minor episodes in a trajectory that goes straight to the final glorious outcome. Personally, I doubt that any life — even Francis Crick's life — is so uncomplicated.
Guido Barbujani
Università di Ferrara
44100 Ferrara, Italy
g.barbujani@unife.it((Eminent Lives.) By Matt )
(Figure)
Francis Crick in Paris, 1993.
Daniel Mordzinski/AFP/Getty Images.
The story of the discovery of the structure of DNA has been told many times. Readers familiar with Watson's famous book, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (New York: Touchstone, 1968; reissued in 2001) — which Crick heartily disliked — may not find Ridley's story equally entertaining. In fact, the two books could hardly be more different. Watson's book starts with a line that has become famous — "I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood" — and proceeds accordingly. Ridley chooses a different key, focusing more on scientific issues than on personality conflicts. His lack of sympathy for anyone who got in Crick's way is apparent, but the emphasis is on the not-so-linear path that led to the double-helix model and on the causes, rather than the manifestations, of the sore conflict between Watson and Crick in the late 1960s. The writing is punctuated by vivid, typically Crickian quotations, such as: "This may be true, but there does not appear to be any evidence for it."
If the reader is not looking for sophisticated literary pleasures, this well-documented book does its job. The slow process through which scientific ideas take shape — how they are tested, rejected, and refined — is well described, and technical terms are clearly explained, so that even nonexperts can easily go through these pages. I see two problems with the book, though. One is the wording of the title. Three chapters describe how Crick, after his main discovery, participated in the effort to understand the rules whereby the information contained in DNA is translated into protein. He was so fascinated by this new challenge that he chose the genetic code as the subject of his Nobel Prize lecture. However, it was H. Gobind Khorana, Marshall W. Nirenberg, and Robert W. Holley who earned the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968 for discovering the genetic code and elucidating its function. Calling Crick the "discoverer of the double helix" would have made for a more appropriate title and done no harm to his reputation.
The second problem I found with this book, aptly published in a series on eminent lives, is that a biography is probably the most difficult way to tell the story of such a complex, multilayered, and controversial process as the quest for the code of life. There is little in this book about other scientists — such as Franklin, Khorana, and Nirenberg — who, from a broad perspective, would be all but secondary characters in the play. Alas, biography is a tricky literary genre, barely less so than autobiography. With just a few laudable exceptions, biographies tend to be one-sided, and this one is no exception. At the end of the book, we are left with the idea that Francis Crick's life was essentially a linear process: there are hesitations and even failures at the beginning, he does not find the right wife or the right job right away, but there is a turning point after which success becomes inevitable, and then the previous vagaries prove minor episodes in a trajectory that goes straight to the final glorious outcome. Personally, I doubt that any life — even Francis Crick's life — is so uncomplicated.
Guido Barbujani
Università di Ferrara
44100 Ferrara, Italy
g.barbujani@unife.it((Eminent Lives.) By Matt )