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Thursday, July 29, 2004 Francis Crick Yesterday, a great biologist passed away after a long battle with colon cancer. On one hand, I'm not sure what to say. As a student, I've pretty much viewed Crick as a historical fixture in science textbooks. I don't know him. I haven't even seen or heard him in person. Other people are way more qualified than I am to talk about Crick's life and work. So in a way, I doubt that my feelings or thoughts about this matter to anyone else except myself. However, I can say how I think his work has influenced me. Like most people, I heard of "Watson and Crick" before I learned that these were two separate men. When I was about nine or ten, I became fascinated with genetics. Which I suppose isn't that surprising now that I look back--what kid hasn't wondered why we look the way we do? I remember checking out a book from the local library with a picture of a simplified DNA helix and thinking, "That's so cool." But at that time, I was far more interested in how the thing worked. I never thought to ask about the people who figured everything out in the first place. Fast forward to high school biology. It was a horrible class. How I escaped it with my love of the subject intact is still somewhat of a mystery to me. There were very few bright spots that I remember about the class and none of them had to do with the teacher. One was the showing of the movie The Race for the Double Helix. I actually don't remember exactly what I saw but I do remember coming away with the feeling that science wasn't just a bunch of stuffy people in lab coats, science was exciting. About two years ago, when I was in my last term at Caltech, I decided to take a neurobiology course about the correlates of consciousness just for the heck of it. The class was taught by Christoph Koch--one of Crick's last collaborators. The textbook for the class, co-written by Crick, was still in its rough draft form and the students in the class were invited to submit suggestions for revision if we came across any errors. Crick never visited the class, but his collaborator had plenty of stories about him and what we learned was infused with Crick's ideas on consciousness, perception, and self. This was literally the kind of thing that made students apply to grad school instead of medical school. So aside from his actual work, Francis Crick is an inspiration. Anyone can navel-gaze and psychoanalyze and say "This is who I am." But I have more admiration for those who really dig down deep to the fundamentals--all the way to the atomic level--to find out really who we are. [posted by S. Y. Affolee on 1:49 PM : ]
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