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July 30, 2004
Francis Crick R.I.P.
"It is difficult to imagine a problem that would not be solved in 25 years.”
That is what Francis Crick once said. Why do I mention a "Francis Crick"? well...he is one of the two (some say three) people who discovered (recognized) the double-helix structure of DNA. This discovery eventually let to the discovery of the Huntington's gene and the Human Genome Project.
It would be hard to overestimate his importance in the eventual cure for Huntington's Disease. Go here to read a wonderfully written article by a truly gifted writer. Here are some excerpts to tempt you:
The evening in 1953 that Crick and his friend, American scientist James Watson, had the idea that DNA had a double helical structure, was probably not particularly different from any other. There couldn’t have been fire in Cambridge’s dry, grey April sky. Over a pint of beer at The Eagle, a popular Cambridge watering hole near Freeschool Lane, Crick had his moment — probably drowned out by the thronging din from drunk Cambridge academics...
Crick bewildered his contemporaries for disappearing beneath mountains of data, to emerge, usually weeks later, with distilled information that would, in the words of one Stanford scientist, “make rooms of intellectuals gasp”. He was bizarrely patient with his inquiries into the structure of DNA — the tempestuous arguments he had with Watson at the now legendary Eagle tavern in Cambridge are now the stuff of legend.
Crick once said, “It is difficult to imagine a problem that would not be solved in 25 years.” The human genome project has begun. And as that other great scientist Albert Einstein famously said, “Time has all the answers.”
Posted by Dave at July 30, 2004 07:19 PM
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