The Story of Francis Crick, a new masterpiece biography by Matthew Cobb
About this episode
Eric Topol interviews Matthew Cobb about his biography of Francis Crick, exploring his life and scientific contributions.
A recording from my enthralling conversation with Prof Matthew Cobb about the life and science contributions of Francis Crick, regarded as one of the most influential biologists of all times, along with Darwin and Mendel. As you’ll see, there’s so much more to Crick’s story than cracking DNA’s double helix structure in a matter of weeks with James Watson. Matthew Cobb, Emeritus Professor of the University of Manchester, has written several award-winning books on life science, but I think this is his most important one to date, deeply researched and a thrilling account of Crick’s life, clearing up, as best as one can, many questions, and presenting some surprises. The transcript is available (A.I. generated) by clicking at the top right. A few things we discussed —Crick’s reaction to James Watson’s book Crick contrasted his own approach to science writing with Watson’s memoir: “The difference between my lecture and your book is that my lecture had a lot more intellectual content and nothing like so much gossip. (...) Your book on the other hand, is mainly gossip and I think it a pity in this way that there is so much of it that it obscures some of the important conclusions which…
People in this episode
Host: Eric Topol
Guest: Matthew Cobb
Topics covered
- biography
- science
- biology
- DNA
- neuroscience
- literature
Keywords
- Francis Crick
- Matthew Cobb
- DNA
- biography
- neuroscience
- James Watson
- The Astonishing Hypothesis
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: University of Manchester
Books & works: The Astonishing Hypothesis, The Peyote Poem
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