50 free Francis Crick trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Francis Crick trivia quiz covers the physicist-turned-biologist who talked his way to the structure of DNA and then spent thirty years asking how the brain makes a mind. The easy questions handle the double helix, Watson, the 1962 Nobel Prize, the central dogma and the Salk Institute. From there it moves through the life: the shoe factory in Northampton, the grandfather who wrote to Darwin, the uncle's garden shed, the wartime mines, the abandoned thesis on the viscosity of water and the book by Schrodinger that changed everything. The harder end covers the helical diffraction theory, the ages at which he started biology and finished his PhD, the RNA Tie Club, adaptor molecules and messenger RNA, the letter to his son that broke auction records, directed panspermia, the chapel he resigned over, the CBE he refused, the REM-sleep theory, the Astonishing Hypothesis and the man who called himself an agnostic 'with a strong inclination towards atheism'. Every answer was checked against Crick's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our DNA and famous scientists quizzes are the natural next stop.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01With Watson and which other scientist did Crick share the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine?
Maurice Wilkins
The citation covered the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer.
Q 02What two-word term did Crick coin for the idea that information in a polypeptide cannot flow back to nucleic acid?
Central dogma
Critics thought 'dogma' implied an unquestionable rule; he meant only a compelling idea without much evidence yet.
Q 03Crick's father and uncle ran a family business near Northampton making what?
Boots and shoes
He grew up in Weston Favell, then a small village outside the town.
Q 04Crick's grandfather Walter, an amateur naturalist, had two of what named after him?
Gastropods
He also wrote a survey of the local foraminifera.
Q 05In a garden shed, Crick's uncle Walter taught him chemistry, glass-blowing and how to make what?
Photographic prints
By about twelve he had decided he preferred scientific answers to religious ones and stopped going to church.
Q 06From the age of 14 Crick was educated on a scholarship where in London?
Mill Hill
The school later bought a bronze bust of him with a single golden helix.
Q 07Crick took his 1937 physics degree at which London institution?
University College
He was later made an honorary fellow there and at two Cambridge colleges.
Q 08Crick's first PhD project, which he called 'the dullest problem imaginable', measured what?
The viscosity of water at high temperatures
It was in the UCL lab of the physicist Edward Andrade.
Q 09What put an end to Crick's first PhD during the Battle of Britain?
A bomb fell through the lab roof
It destroyed his apparatus and deflected him from a career in physics.
Q 10During the war Crick worked for the Admiralty designing what?
Magnetic and acoustic mines
One of his mines proved effective against German minesweepers.
Q 11At what age did Crick begin studying biology, in 1947?
31
He was part of a migration of physicists into biology after the war.
Q 12Crick said switching from physics to biology was almost like what?
Being born again
He had to trade the 'elegance and deep simplicity' of physics for messy evolved chemistry.
Q 13What did Crick say the experience of learning physics had taught him, to biology's benefit?
Hubris
Since physics had succeeded, he reasoned, big advances must be possible in biology too, and he could be more daring.
Which book, read in 1946, helped persuade Crick to switch from physics to biology?
Q 21The Chargaff ratios showed that in DNA the amount of adenine equals the amount of what?
Thymine
Chargaff visited England in 1952 and drove the point home to Watson and Crick.
Q 22Which chemist confirmed for Watson and Crick the correct tautomeric forms of the DNA bases?
Jerry Donohue
Getting the keto and amine forms right was essential for the hydrogen bonds to line up.
Q 23On which date in 1953 did Crick and Watson crack the structure of DNA?
28 February
The first paper appeared in Nature eight weeks later.
Crick's 1953 letter to his son explaining the double helix sold at auction in 2013 for roughly how much?
What Is Life?
Schrodinger's book, along with Linus Pauling's example, made him think covalent bonds could store genetic information.
Q 15Which Cambridge college was Crick a PhD student and later honorary fellow of?
Gonville and Caius
He later turned down its Mastership before leaving for California.
Q 16Who directed the Cavendish Laboratory where Crick worked, having won a Nobel Prize at 25?
Lawrence Bragg
Bragg was keen to beat Pauling to DNA after being pipped to the alpha helix.
Q 17John Randall, biophysics chief at which London institution, had refused Crick's application?
King's
It was where his friend Maurice Wilkins worked, and where the crucial DNA X-ray data came from.
Q 18How old was Crick, still a graduate student, when the 23-year-old Watson arrived at the Cavendish?
35
The war had delayed his doctorate; Watson already had one.
Q 19With William Cochran and which mathematician did Crick develop the theory of helical X-ray diffraction?
Vladimir Vand
The theory fitted alpha-helix proteins and later proved useful for DNA.
Q 20When did Crick himself first see Franklin's Photo 51?
After the model was published
It was Watson whom Wilkins showed the picture; Crick worked from Wilkins's B-form data and the MRC report.
$6 million
It remains the largest sum ever paid for a letter at auction.
Q 25Crick's letter to his son Michael began: 'Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important' what?
Discovery
Michael was at a British boarding school at the time.
Q 26Bragg's talk at which London medical school on 14 May 1953 produced the first newspaper story?
Guy's Hospital
The News Chronicle ran it the next day; The New York Times followed with a six-paragraph piece that was pulled from later editions.
Q 27How old was Crick when he finally completed his PhD in 1954?
37
The thesis was titled 'X-Ray Diffraction: Polypeptides and Proteins'.
Q 28Crick's 1954 postdoc supervisor David Harker was called 'the John Wayne of' what?
Crystallography
He worked there on ribonuclease and protein synthesis before returning to Cambridge.
Q 29Which physicist founded the 'RNA Tie Club', for which Crick wrote his 1956 paper on the coding problem?
George Gamow
Crick proposed there would be small 'adaptor molecules' linking nucleic acid sequences to amino acids.
Q 30Crick's proposed 'adaptor molecules' of 1956 turned out to be what?
Transfer RNAs
His 'ribonucleic-protein complexes' became known as ribosomes.