Book to Note

Matt Ridley, Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. x + 213 pp. $19.95.

Reviewed by Matthew Soniak

It is no small task to explain a life, let alone the secret of life, in a few hundred pages, but this slim book does more than that; it may have gotten to the soul of both. Ridley skillfully traces the separate paths of the history of modern biology and Francis Crick’s journey to greatness until the two threads met in 1953 with Crick’s and Watson’s discovery of DNA’s structure. Ridley brilliantly captures Crick’s thinking style: his love of debate; his insistence on written, not remembered, evidence; and his ability to visualize in three dimensions. The book also discusses the controversial and misunderstood aspects of Crick’s findings, including allegations of stolen data and conflicts with Rosalind Franklin and Richard Gregory. Rid ley’s story is succinct and flowing but is so full of names and places that it is occasionally difficult to keep track of the narrative; photographs and an index would have helped. Still, there is much to be learned about DNA, scientific pursuit, the creative soul of a man, and the secret of life.