Beyond the Double Helix

I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood." James Watson's mischievous opening line of The Double Helix raised many eyebrows at the time, but even Crick wouldn't quarrel with it now. Still brash and outspoken at 86, even without the booming laugh that once echoed through Cambridge's Cavendish lab, Crick has no reason for modesty. In the years since their discovery of the double helix, Crick, unlike Watson, has continued to do significant research, mostly by pondering big--and often controversial--theoretical questions rather than by toiling in the lab. Says his longtime colleague and fellow Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner: "He's...