British molecular biologist who won a Nobel Prize for his part in the elucidation of the structure of DNA. He was led by his belief that the chances of life originating on Earth were very low to argue the case for panspermia and, in particular, a radical form of this hypothesis known as directed panspermia. More recently, Crick had been involved with examining the possibility that RNA was the first replicator molecule on Earth during an early biological era known as the "RNA world". For the latter part of his career, he was at the Salk Institute, California.
