R.I.P. Francis Crick

(Me and Francis Crick, 1999)

I learned today, via Panda’s Thumb, of the death of Nobel Laureate Francis Crick. I have long considered Crick one of the half-dozen true geniuses in America, and was privileged to meet him five years ago, shortly after I graduated from college. I was working on my long-delayed biography of Jacob Bronowski—I still haven’t done much research, since law school got in the way—and Crick invited me to his office at the Salk Institute; an office which once was Bronowski’s. (You can see Bronowski’s photo over my right shoulder in the picture above.) Unfortunately, Crick did not know much about Bronowski that I didn’t already know, but it was a real treat to meet this fascinating and very nice man. I remember he explained the “eyeless” gene to me, the first time I’d ever heard of such a thing.

Starstruck as I was, during lunch I said, “It must be very strange that here you discovered the structure of DNA, and in this restaurant, nobody realizes who you are.”

“Well,” he said, in an English accent I should have expected, “I recall Bruno”—that was Bronowski’s nickname—“saying in one of his programs that his daughter knew who Francis Crick was, but had to ask who Adolf Hitler was. He thought this was delightful and that future generations would someday be like that. I’m not so sure.”

“But, I mean, how does it feel to see something like the O.J. jury, where people just ignore the DNA evidence like that?”

“Ah,” he said, deep contempt in his voice, “well, you have to know how the American ‘legal’ system works.” Somehow you could hear the quote marks around “legal,” the way he said it. I didn’t tell him I was going to start law school soon.

How sad to learn of the death of this truly legendary thinker.