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Life Story - a dramatisation of our work on DNA

RELATED STORIES

The beauty of the double helix model
Francis Crick Scientist
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Ours wasn’t exactly right, it was only approximately right. Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins had refined it and got it in a better shape. Well, it’s… it isn't… it isn’t that it looks so beautiful, it’s the idea, I think, of the structure and what it does which it… because of its… its simplicity that’s really… really what makes people say it’s beautiful, which I think is the right word. I mean, it was very unexpected that it should be as simple and as striking as that.

The late Francis Crick, one of Britain's most famous scientists, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962. He is best known for his discovery, jointly with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins, of the double helix structure of DNA, though he also made important contributions in understanding the genetic code and was exploring the basis of consciousness in the years leading up to his death in 2004.

Listeners: Christopher Sykes

Christopher Sykes is an independent documentary producer who has made a number of films about science and scientists for BBC TV, Channel Four, and PBS.

Tags: Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins

Duration: 30 seconds

Date story recorded: 1993

Date story went live: 24 January 2008