The beauty of the double helix model

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Life Story - a dramatisation of our work on DNA

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The beauty of the double helix model

Francis Crick Scientist

		Views	Duration
41. Publishing papers in Nature		1408	00:49
42. Reactions to the papers we published		1334	00:58
43. The beauty of the double helix model		1725	00:30
44. Life Story - a dramatisation of our work on DNA		1181	01:23
45. Gradual acceptance of the structure of DNA		959	01:09
46. Elegance and beauty in scientific theories		1003	01:50
47. Mathematics is a discipline in its own		1355	01:17
48. A physicist no longer	1	1138	00:25
49. Looking at the world in a different way		1019	00:34
50. Interest in the brain generates many questionable theories		681	02:00

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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.

Title: The beauty of the double helix model

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