What can today’s scientists, thinkers, and curious minds learn from the man who cracked the code of life—and then set out to unravel consciousness?
Francis Crick is best known for the double helix. But the real genius of Crick wasn’t just that historic model—it was his lifelong method of thinking, theorizing, and provoking new science. In his 2024 Wilkins–Bernal–Medawar Lecture, historian Matthew Cobb didn’t just recount Crick’s achievements—he gave us a masterclass in how Crick thought.
Here are the ten key lessons from Crick’s life that every scientist, student, and problem-solver can take to heart.
1. Start With Big, Fundamental Questions
“What is life?” “What is consciousness?”
These aren’t modest goals. Crick didn’t shy away from “impossible” questions—he embraced them. He began his post-war scientific career by writing to the MRC that he wanted to solve both.
📌 Takeaway: Don’t be afraid to ask big, even naive, questions. They often lead to the deepest breakthroughs.
2. Structure Matters — In Molecules and Ideas
Crick believed that function follows structure—not just in DNA, but in brains, in theories, in institutions. He was obsessed with understanding the architecture of things.
📌 Takeaway: Before you can explain how something works, understand what it is and how it is organized.
3. Theorize Boldly, But Always to Provoke Experiments
Crick wasn’t a bench scientist. His skill was in building theoretical scaffolding that inspired real experiments. His papers often ended with, “What do we need to know next?” rather than grand conclusions.
📌 Takeaway: A good theory doesn’t just explain—it challenges others to test it.
4. Accept Contradiction, But Don’t Get Paralyzed
When data didn’t fit their hypotheses, Crick and Brenner sometimes said: “We’ll deal with that later.” Risky? Yes. Productive? Also yes. They bet that the messy data would eventually make sense—and it often did.
📌 Takeaway: Progress doesn’t always require perfect agreement. Sometimes, it’s okay to set anomalies aside—if you know what you’re doing.
5. Curiosity is More Valuable Than Credentials
Crick never let his physics background stop him from diving into biology, then neuroscience. He read widely—sometimes even what he called “rubbish”—just in case there was something useful.
📌 Takeaway: The best scientists are generalists at heart. Read outside your field. Be promiscuous with ideas.
6. Be Clear, Be Sharp, Be Short
Crick’s writing—often in the form of “think-pieces”—was sharp, lucid, and memorable. He learned to write clearly as a boy, reading the Children’s Encyclopaedia. He believed that if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it.
📌 Takeaway: Clarity is not optional. If your writing or thinking is muddy, it probably means your ideas are too.
7. Time to Think Is Not a Luxury—It’s the Work
Crick’s days weren’t filled with meetings, grant applications, or admin. He read. He thought. He talked to people. That’s how the ideas came.
📌 Takeaway: Protect your thinking time. Great ideas need space to grow.
8. Surround Yourself With Sharp Minds—Then Argue
At the Salk Institute, Crick set up a forum where top scientists presented ideas—and got grilled. Even Nobel laureates found it intimidating. And yet, they kept coming back.
📌 Takeaway: Find or build a community that challenges you, not just one that affirms you.
9. Use Your Influence to Push Ideas, Not People
Crick wasn’t just promoting friends—he was promoting important, overlooked work. When an article was rejected by Nature for being “uninteresting,” Crick wrote a letter demanding it be published. It later became a foundational neuroscience paper with 5,000+ citations.
📌 Takeaway: Use whatever power or platform you have to amplify good ideas. That’s real influence.
10. Stay Interested. Stay Fun. Stay Thinking.
Even in his final years, weakened by cancer, Crick sat in the desert reading about neural nets. Asked what he did all day, he replied: “I think.” The people around him always remembered one thing: it was fun.
📌 Takeaway: Never stop being interested. Let your work be a source of joy, not just obligation.
Final Reflection: Crick's World and Ours
Francis Crick operated in a world nearly unrecognizable to today’s scientists:
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He never had to teach or grade.
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He only wrote one grant.
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He could think without distraction.
And yet, his methods—boldness, clarity, curiosity, community—are more important than ever. Even in today’s constrained academic climate, we can protect these values.
Crick didn’t just discover how life works. He showed us how to work on life’s biggest mysteries.
✍️ Want to Think Like Crick?
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Block out a morning just to read and write—no emails.
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Ask yourself: What’s the biggest question in my field?
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Share an unfinished idea with a smart friend and ask them to tear it apart.
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Read something outside your domain—and see what it sparks.
If we want more Cricks, we don’t need more geniuses. We need more freedom to think, more space to explore, and a little more fun in the process.
