Rethinking the Discovery of DNA

Francis Crick is best known as one of the figures behind the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA, but the familiar story leaves out as much as it explains. Historian of science Matthew Cobb looks closely at how Crick’s life actually unfolded, revealing a career shaped less by inevitability than by luck, conflict, false starts, and a series of highly contingent moments.

The double helix itself may have been waiting to be found, but what followed was anything but predetermined. Crick’s influence came from asking uncomfortable questions about what the structure of DNA implied for genetics, evolution, and life itself. Along the way, myths hardened around personalities, credit, and rivalries, especially in the case of Rosalind Franklin, whose role has been both misunderstood and oversimplified.

The conversation also traces Crick’s later turn away from molecular biology toward the problem that fascinated him from the beginning: consciousness. From visual perception to the search for neural correlates of experience, his ambition was to push back against mystical explanations and insist that even the most elusive aspects of the mind belonged to the material world.

Matthew Cobb is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester. He is the author of numerous works of science and history. His new book is Crick: A Mind in Motion, a biography of the legendary scientist Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.