The Story of Francis Crick, a new masterpiece biography by Matthew Cobb
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What insights does Matthew Cobb provide about Francis Crick's character?
And just so as we're getting warmed up here, this is Matthew Cobb's seventh book, okay? And He has another one that he's working on, on Heredity. So he's not going to stop writing, and he is amazing. Now, I thought we'd start with all the insights I learned about Francis Crick from such a deep interrogation of what he was like. He, in many ways, was a challenging dogma, a boat rocker, But interestingly, besides being agnostic, he would throw racy parties, he's bohemian, he's a philanderer, he had an open marriage with his wife Odile, is how do you say it? For 55 years, even though he had affairs and whatnot. He was an intellectual snob, he never voted, he had no radio or TV until 1980. So arrogant, ruthless.
He wrote about stuff that would be eugenics, quick-witted. But on the other hand, he would give talks to children. There are a lot of paradoxes about this man. And maybe you can kind of tell me, did I have it right that this guy was just a very unique character?
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. So it was actually quite reassuring that he's not a complete genius in everything.
How did Crick's personal life influence his scientific work?
There are parts of the world, in particular the social world, that he just doesn't understand and doesn't make the effort to try and work out what's going on. So there were times, most of the time, I was just kind of astonished by quite how clever he was. But there are these other parts where I can see, no, you don't get it. You don't understand. So why don't you understand it? And the book that I ended up putting him on was that these ideas come from his Edwardian past. He was born in 1916, right? So that's a long time ago. Yeah. And he imbibed all these ideas in the 1920s, which were as kind of nationalistic and stupid and, you know, racist as you might expect, and never really interrogated them. And for most of his life, it had no consequence because he wasn't thinking about such things.
But when he did, he kind of flipped back to this very old way of thinking.
Yeah, no, and I thought there was some common ground there with James Watson, who also was known for his eugenics, race.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What insights does Matthew Cobb provide about Francis Crick's character?
0:00–3:32
2
How did Crick's personal life influence his scientific work?
3:32–5:48
3
What were the pivotal moments in Crick's transition from physics to molecular biology?
5:48–7:46
4
What controversies surrounded the discovery of DNA's double helix structure?
7:46–10:44
5
How did Crick's views on consciousness evolve throughout his career?
10:44–13:19
6
What role did poetry play in Crick's life and work?
13:19–16:48
7
How did Crick's contributions shape modern neuroscience?
16:48–22:14
8
What is the legacy of the Francis Crick Institute?
22:14–58:42
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