Nobelist Francis Crick, stalwart supporter of CSICOP and the center for inquiry, mourned

We regret the passing of Francis Crick at the age of 88, after a long illness. Francis Harvey Compton Crick was born in England on June 8, 1916. He died on July 28, 2004, in San Diego, California, where he was affiliated with the Salk Institute.

Crick deplored the widespread scientific illiteracy and he believed that there needs to be some public appreciation of the scientific outlook and the methods of science. He was elected a Fellow of CSICOP in 1983 and a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism in the same year.

Crick is widely recognized as one of the founders of modern molecular biology. He, along with James D. Watson, received the Nobel Prize in 1962 for the co-discovery of the structure of DNA.

Indeed, many consider Crick to be the driving force in this research, its key intellectual leader. A whole line of crucial developments have already come out of this work--such as the Genome Project.

In his first book, Molecules and Men (1966, reissued by Prometheus Books in 2004), Crick raised the question of the demarcation line between "living" and "non-living" matter, a difficult issue to resolve, he wrote. He abandoned this quest and instead proposed to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.

He rejects what is known as "vitalism," the view that there is a "special force" directing the behavior and growth of living systems; or in recent years the reconsideration of "intelligent design." Crick was especially critical of religion as a substitute for science in explaining biological phenomena. He forcefully defended natural selection as a key concept in evolutionary biology, and he also rejected "the soul" or "consciousness" as immune to physical-chemical explanations.

Many observers believe that Crick's co-discovery of DNA's structure will be recognized as one of the greatest breakthroughs in science in the twentieth century, virtually equal to the work of Darwin and Mendel. The world has lost not only a great scientist, but a powerful voice on behalf of science.

Paul Kurtz is Chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group