Francis Crick: The DNA of a scientific thinker

Biographers work on a spectrum: From the nimble narrative, propulsive and colourful and condensed, to the definitive doorstop, a storehouse within which all there is to know has been comprehensively gathered.

- JANICE P NIMURA

Two earlier biographies of Francis Crick, the British biologist who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for figuring out the form and function of DNA, have already staked out the poles — Matt Ridley’s, slim and roguish; and Robert Olby’s, densely academic. Both were published within five years of Crick’s death in 2004.

With Crick: A Mind in Motion, the British biologist Matthew Cobb aims for the tricky “middle path”: A life vivid enough to engage readers who haven't thought about the double helix since high school, and detailed enough to satisfy the scientists.

Cobb situates the science in the context of the man. A disclaimer in Cobb’s prologue suggests that he is aware this approach may be a challenge. “Crick’s scientific writings and ideas are described in away that should be easy for the general reader to understand,” Cobb insists, “but if you find yourself struggling, then follow Crick’s advice to the readers of his own books and skip the hard bits.”

Crick’s life lends itself to storytelling. As an unremarkable physics student at University College London, he was recruited to conduct military research during World War II, a role in which he encountered prodigious minds and from which he emerged, at the age of 30, impatient to wrestle with big ideas.