What do you think?
Rate this book
Crick: A Mind in Motion – from DNA to the Brain
AN ECONOMIST, GUARDIAN AND CHURCH TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
Shortlisted for the Hatchards First Biography Prize 2025
'The definitive backstory of one of the towering figures of 20th-century science' Guardian Books of the Year
'Brilliant and inspiring. A landmark biography' Adam Rutherford
Francis Crick was a restless, relentless thinker, as fascinated by Beat poetry and psychedelics as the genetic meaning of life and the inner workings of the brain. Yet for all his drive, he was galvanised by with Jim Watson on DNA, with artists in Cambridge and California, and with his wife Odile, who drew the figure of the double helix that illuminated his most famous discovery. It was his debates and conflicts with these collaborators that powered a mind in motion.
Meticulously researched and shot through with insight and electrifying detail, Matthew Cobb reveals the man who changed our view of life forever. Crick is the first major biography of one of the twentieth century's most exciting minds.
Shortlisted for the Hatchards First Biography Prize 2025
'The definitive backstory of one of the towering figures of 20th-century science' Guardian Books of the Year
'Brilliant and inspiring. A landmark biography' Adam Rutherford
Francis Crick was a restless, relentless thinker, as fascinated by Beat poetry and psychedelics as the genetic meaning of life and the inner workings of the brain. Yet for all his drive, he was galvanised by with Jim Watson on DNA, with artists in Cambridge and California, and with his wife Odile, who drew the figure of the double helix that illuminated his most famous discovery. It was his debates and conflicts with these collaborators that powered a mind in motion.
Meticulously researched and shot through with insight and electrifying detail, Matthew Cobb reveals the man who changed our view of life forever. Crick is the first major biography of one of the twentieth century's most exciting minds.
- GenresBiography
605 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 6, 2025
8 people are currently reading
84 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 15, 2025
Bacon, Francis, quotation 160, 308-309
Bartók, Béla 349
Brecht: A Choice of Evils by Martin Esslin, 194
cannabis, recreational use and legalisation of 266, 275, 317
CETI (communication with extraterrestrial intelligence) meeting, Yerevan 1971, 299-300, 301
Chance and Necessity, by Jacques Monod 276
Damasio, Antonio 404, 413, 429
diffusion gradients, 258, 261-262
Dyson, Freeman 35-36, 167
flimflam, philosophical see philosophical flimflam
Freud, Sigmund 398, 444-5
Hebb, Donald 376, 380
Hinton, Geoffrey 377, 380, 382, 404-5
Hopfield, John 380-382, 404, 429
IQ and race 281n, 282
Jensen, Arthur 282-4
Kandel, Eric 303, 404
Liu, David 416
Marr, David 361-6, 369, 371, 388, 445
McClelland, Jay 372, 377
NCC (neural correlates of consciousness) 409, 431, 439, 443-4, 446, 451
neural net(work)s 367 369, 372, 376, 381-2, 386, 391, 404-7, 416, 421
optogenetics 448-9
Parallel Distributed Processing: Psychological and Biological Models (1986) 386
PDP / the PDP group 372, 376-8, 382, 386-8, 390, 404, 409, 439
Poggio, Tomaso 'Tommy' 362-3, 366, 376, 404
RNA-Seq 448
Rumelhart, David 372, 377
Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness,' paper by Crick and Koch 413
transcriptional mapping 448
Vision, by David Marr 364, 366
Bartók, Béla 349
Brecht: A Choice of Evils by Martin Esslin, 194
cannabis, recreational use and legalisation of 266, 275, 317
CETI (communication with extraterrestrial intelligence) meeting, Yerevan 1971, 299-300, 301
Chance and Necessity, by Jacques Monod 276
Damasio, Antonio 404, 413, 429
diffusion gradients, 258, 261-262
Dyson, Freeman 35-36, 167
flimflam, philosophical see philosophical flimflam
Freud, Sigmund 398, 444-5
Hebb, Donald 376, 380
Hinton, Geoffrey 377, 380, 382, 404-5
Hopfield, John 380-382, 404, 429
IQ and race 281n, 282
Jensen, Arthur 282-4
Kandel, Eric 303, 404
Liu, David 416
Marr, David 361-6, 369, 371, 388, 445
McClelland, Jay 372, 377
NCC (neural correlates of consciousness) 409, 431, 439, 443-4, 446, 451
neural net(work)s 367 369, 372, 376, 381-2, 386, 391, 404-7, 416, 421
optogenetics 448-9
Parallel Distributed Processing: Psychological and Biological Models (1986) 386
PDP / the PDP group 372, 376-8, 382, 386-8, 390, 404, 409, 439
Poggio, Tomaso 'Tommy' 362-3, 366, 376, 404
RNA-Seq 448
Rumelhart, David 372, 377
Towards a Neurobiological Theory of Consciousness,' paper by Crick and Koch 413
transcriptional mapping 448
Vision, by David Marr 364, 366
Displaying 1 of 1 review