Francis Crick
Francis Harry Compton Crick OM FRS (8 June 1916 – 28 July 2004), was a British molecular biologist, physicist, and neuroscientist, and most noted for being one of the co-discoverers of the structure of the DNA molecule in 1953. He, James D. Watson and Maurice Wilkins were jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material" .
Crick is widely known for use of the term "central dogma" to summarize an idea that genetic information flow in cells is essentially one-way, from DNA to RNA to protein. Crick was an important theoretical molecular biologist and played an important role in research related to revealing the genetic code.
During the remainder of his career, he held the post of J.W. Kieckhefer Distinguished Research Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. His later research centered on theoretical neurobiology and attempts to advance the scientific study of human consciousness. He remained in this post until his death; "he was editing a manuscript on his death bed, a scientist until the bitter end" said Christof Koch.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_...
“The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he'll fight and die for it."[As quoted in The New Yorker, April 25, 2011]”
“How do I know what I think until I hear what I say?”
“There is no scientific study more vital to man than the study of his own brain. Our entire view of the universe depends on it.”
“Human beings... are far too prone to generalize from one instance. The technical word for this, interestingly enough, is superstition.”
“It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us.”
“It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.”