Revisiting the 1953 DNA Discovery

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 can be drawn of what we did at the time”.

—The Peyote Poem, by Michael McClure (part 1) that had a big influence on Crick

—Crick’s 1994 neuroscience book “The Astonishing Hypothesis”

“You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free Weill, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”—Crick

The book has been reviewed at Science, Nature, The Economist and many other journals. Here is a gift link to The Economist It has deservedly been named a best book of 2025 by The Guardian, The Economist, and many other media.

Thank you Bruce Lanphear, Harshi Peiris, Ph.D., Elisabetta Pilotti, Allan Konopka, Stephen B. Thomas, PhD, and over 500 others for tuning into my live video with Matthew Cobb!

*********************

Upcoming, this Wednesday 9AM PT, live podcast

I will be interviewing Dan Buettner founder of the Blue Zones

Join us!

**********************

Thanks to US News for recently being named one of the 25 best leaders in the United States

https://www.usnews.com/news/leaders/articles/best-leaders-2025-eric-topol

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Thanks to >190,000 Ground Truths subscribers from every US state and 210 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile.

If you found this interesting PLEASE share it!

Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don’t hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that you would like to see covered.

Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. It enabled us to accept and support 47 summer interns in 2025! We aim to accept even more of the several thousand who will apply for summer 2026.