AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025 Shortlisted for the Hatchards First Biography Prize 2025
'The definitive backstory of one of the towering figures of 20th-century science' Guardian
Books of the Year 'Brilliant and inspiring. A landmark biography' Adam Rutherford Francis
Crick was a restless relentless thinker as fascinated by Beat poetry and psychedelics as the
genetic meaning of life and the inner workings of the brain. Yet for all his drive he was
galvanised by collaboration: with Jim Watson on DNA with artists in Cambridge and California
and with his wife Odile who drew the figure of the double helix that illuminated his most
famous discovery. It was his debates and conflicts with these collaborators that powered a mind
in motion. Meticulously researched and shot through with insight and electrifying detail
Matthew Cobb reveals the man who changed our view of life forever. Crick is the first major
biography of one of the twentieth century's most exciting minds.
