Francis Crick
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
June 8, 1916 - July 28, 2004
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Scientific Discipline: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience Membership Type:
International Member
(elected 1969)
Photo Credit: Marc Lieberman, published in Siegel RM, Callaway EM |
Francis Crick was a theoretical biologist whose research focused on the nature of the genetic code. He explained the flow of genetic information in the cell––DNA to RNA to protein––as the “central dogma” of molecular biology. He is best known for his codiscovery of the double helical structure of DNA and its semiconservative mechanism of replication. Crick and James D. Watson won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for “their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material."
