The Papers of Francis Crick — 'The cleverest person I have ever met'

That's how other scientists routinely described him (above, right, with James D. Watson in 1953, soon after their epochal description of the structure of DNA, for which they would receive the Nobel Prize in 1962), according to Matt Ridley's new biography, which I just started last evening.

I bought the book after reading Nicholas Wade's rave review in the July 11 New York Times.

As is my wont, I begin a book by reading everything but the book itself: the dust jacket, the table of contents, the dedication, sources and acknowledgements, a note on the type, anything and everything not the text.

In the course of my preliminary nosing around I read that "Some of his [Crick's] letters, lecture notes, and drafts of papers can now be found on the Internet at http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/SC/."

And so they can.

Here's a link to an excerpt of Chapter 1 of Ridley's book.

More about Crick (below),

who died in 2004 at the age of 88, here.