Matthew Cobb

Well, I certainly don't think he'd last very long in modern-day academia.

Not only because he was a rubbish at doing experiments and asking for money, he only ever applied for one large grant in his life, but clearly aspects of his behavior would now be deemed unsuitable.

I mean, having been said, he had no... I mean, you know, I knew about his affairs, which is one of the things that a lot of people want to talk about, and I realized very soon on that that was not going to give me much insight into his science, which is what I was really interested in.

And so...

out of respect for the various people involved.

I haven't actually named any names and they're mentioned every now and again as kind of little bits of information.

they're not really important in understanding him unlike say picasso right i mean if you don't understand picasso's affairs you can't understand the various phases of his of his art because they're all linked with relationships with women whereas this is just something that goes on but that being said i just want to make clear in case it was unclear he none of his affairs with students or anybody with whom he had a position of authority so

You know, he wouldn't be drummed out for that.

I just think people would raise their eyebrows.

And certainly his views on eugenics, which continued into the 1970s, would be seen as unacceptable today.

Although I noticed that a lot of the tech bros have very similar ideas.

Because Crick's main interest, as he put it, was he had a prejudice against the poor.

Which seems very strange.

And I think this is one of the actually really interesting things that I found in working on the book.

Because most of the science is either, there's bits of it, especially in his youth and early career, which are very detailed and a bit boring.

But most of his later work is really big ideas.

And what I wanted to do was to work out how on earth he was able to have all these ideas in his head.

And then...

there's every time it touches anything to do with society, anything to do with politics,

He's a complete ninny.