What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery

... A Personal View of Scientific Discovery [with a focus on Biology, Genetics & DNA]
Review of Robert @goodreads, whorated it 4 stars:

Francis Crick is no Jim Watson...and that's a good thing! This little book, an intellectual biography of one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century, is a revealing look at the "road to the double helix" as well as an update on what Crick did professionally after moving out of molecular biology. Whereas Watson's book ("The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA") is all about personalities, scientific rivalries, and competition for the ultimate (Nobel) prize, Crick provides, as his subtitle states, "A Personal View of Scientific Discovery" that is short on drama but long on the details of the doing of science. As such, this book provides a long overdue tonic to Watson's telling of the most important biological work of the 20th century.

What I find one of the amazing things about Crick is well described in the "Epilogue: My Later Years". At the age of 60, with a Nobel Prize in hand, he left molecular biology and the study of DNA and the genetic code to study neurobiology, the nature of consciousness, and the workings of the brain at the Salk Institute in La Jolla. Not surprisingly he made some fundamental contributions to that field too. According to his long-time colleague at the Salk Institute, Christof Koch, Crick was "editing a manuscript on his deathbed, a scientist to the bitter end".What comes through most clearly in this wonderful book is Crick's life-long dedication to scientific understanding and the power of his intellect. Perhaps what set him apart was his ability to clearly see what the big scientific problems were and how best to move forward, sometimes incrementally and sometimes in brilliant flashes, but always as a result of dedication, focus and clarity of thought.