Physicist, molecular biologist, neuroscientist: Francis Crick’s scientific career took many turns. And now, he is the subject of zoologist Matthew Cobb’s new book, *Crick: a Mind in Motion – from DNA to the Brain**.* Born in 1916, Crick studied physics at University College London in the mid-1930s, before working for the Admiralty Research Laboratory during the Second World War. But after reading physicist Erwin Schrödinger’s 1944 book *What Is Life? The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell*, and a 1946 article on the structure of biological molecules by chemist Linus Pauling, Crick left his career in physics and switched to molecular biology in 1947. Six years later, while working at the University of Cambridge, he played a key role in decoding the double-helix structure of DNA, working in collaboration with biologist James Watson, biophysicist Maurice Wilkins and other researchers including chemist and X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin.…