Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code

Ridley, Matt

ISBN 10: 006082333X / ISBN 13: 9780060823337

Published by Harper Collins, 2006

About this Item

Remainder mark lower edge. Size: Octavo (standard book size). Text body is clean, and free from previous owner annotation, underlining and highlighting. Binding is tight, covers and spine fully intact. No foxing in this copy. Dust Jacket is in as new condition, apart from normal shop shelf wear - contains no tears or chips or other damage. Dust Jacket un-clipped. All edges clean, neat and free of foxing. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 1 kilogram. Category: Science & Technology; Genetics; 1960s; Biography & Autobiography. ISBN: 006082333X. ISBN/EAN: 9780060823337. All our pictures shown here are of the actual item, not stock photos. Inventory No: 23571. For further info on this title, click on the "Contact Seller" button within this listing. We will try to reply within 24 hours. Otherwise you can order right now (inclusive of shipping options) from the "Add to Basket" button to the right.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code
• Publisher: Harper Collins
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 006082333X
• ISBN 13: 9780060823337
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: As New
• Seller catalogs:
  • Science & Technology

About this title

Synopsis

Francis Crick, who died at the age of eighty-eight in 2004, will be bracketed with Galileo, Darwin, and Einstein as one of the great scientists of all time. Between 1953 and 1966 he made and led a revolution in biology by discovering, quite literally, the secret of life: the digital cipher at the heart of heredity that distinguishes living from non-living things -- the genetic code. His own discoveries -- though he always worked with one other partner and did much of his thinking in conversation -- include not only the double helix but the whole mechanism of protein synthesis, the three-letter nature of the code, and much of the code itself.

Matt Ridley's biography traces Crick's life from middle-class mediocrity in the English Midlands, through a lackluster education and six years designing magnetic mines for the Royal Navy, to his leap into biology at the age of thirty-one. While at Cambridge, he suddenly began to display the unique visual imagination and intense tenacity of thought that would allow him to see the solutions to several great scientific conundrums -- and to see them long before most biologists had even conceived of the problems. Having set out to determine what makes living creatures alive and having succeeded, he immigrated at age sixty to California and turned his attention to the second question that had fascinated him since his youth: What makes conscious creatures conscious? Time ran out before he could find the answer.

About the Author

Matt Ridley's books―including The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist, The Evolution of Everything, How Innovation Works, and most recently, Viral: the Search for the Origin of Covid-19 (with Alina Chan)―have sold over a million copies, been translated into 31 languages, and won several awards. He sat in the House of Lords from 2013 and 2021, and was founding chairman of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle. He created the “Mind and Matter” column in the Wall Street Journal in 2010, and was a columnist for the Times. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He lives in Northumberland.