Nobel laureate Francis Crick, who half a century ago with James Watson made one of the seminal discoveries of modern science -- the double-helix structure of DNA -- died Wednesday in San Diego. He was 88.
Crick died at Thornton Hospital after a long battle with colon cancer. He remained actively involved in theoretical research until just before his death.
His 1953 discovery with Watson almost single-handedly launched the modern field of molecular genetics, with far-reaching implications for fathoming our biology as well as practical spin-offs ranging from genetic engineering to DNA fingerprinting.
Crick's later work was central to cracking the genetic code -- how stretches of DNA carry the instructions for all the structures of life.
Fascinated by the biology of the brain from an early age, Crick devoted the final portion of his life to tackling the science of consciousness, a mystery he described as "the major unsolved problem in biology."
Colleagues and friends remembered him as an endlessly curious man with a first-class intellect who never tired of discussing ideas and who had a keen homing instinct for the most important scientific mysteries of the day.
"He was the living incarnation of what it is to be a scholar: brilliant, rational, dispassionate and always willing to revise his own opinions and views in light of the actions of a universe that never ceased to astonish him," said Caltech professor Christof Koch, Crick's collaborator for many years. "He was editing a manuscript on his deathbed, a scientist until the bitter end."
An inveterate collaborator and gatherer of thinkers about him, Crick mused over the years on questions as varied as why people dream, where life came from and whether much of the DNA in our cells was parasitic junk.
"Until his death, Francis was the person with whom I could most easily talk about ideas," Watson, now chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y., said in a statement Thursday. "He will be sorely missed."
At the time of Crick and Watson's discovery, scientists were deeply mystified by the chemical nature of genes. They had only just begun to suspect that a long, stringy chemical known as deoxyribonucleic acid -- known for short as DNA -- might be the substance that genes were made of. And they did not know how such a code would work.
Crick and Watson were convinced that DNA was central to the mystery and so were drawn to each other. Their different scientific backgrounds and personalities were a perfect match.
