The Dullest Problem Imaginable: Francis Crick’s Handwritten PhD Notebooks
Before Francis Crick was famous for his work on the structure of DNA he actually attempted a PhD in physics. His three handwritten laboratory notebooks from that time provide remarkable insight into his intellectual development, and show that sometimes failure can be a lucky break.
Sometimes mistakes are just as important to the history of science as flashes of insight, and these three remarkable, handwritten notebooks are evidence of perhaps the luckiest failed PhD in science history.
Few people are aware that Nobel-Prize winning molecular biologist Francis Crick – one half of the famous duo ‘Watson & Crick’ – actually began his career in physics. He completed his undergraduate degree in the subject at University College London, then stayed on as a graduate student to study what he later described as ‘the dullest problem imaginable - how the viscosity of water, under pressure, changes with temperature. This project involved building equipment, which Crick enjoyed but was not very good at (he was never very practical)’ (Cobb, Crick: A Mind in Motion, pp. 25-26).
These notebooks provide incredible, day-by-day, details of Crick’s full research programme, both its successes and the frustrations, from March of 1938 to August, 1939.
The early months are devoted to experiment design and construction, and on March 17th he carries out a review of progress, with a list of ‘preliminary experiments to be done’. There are near-daily conversations with ‘the Prof’ (his advisor, Edward Neville da Costa Andrade) and the laboratory technicians, and frequent ‘to do’ lists, often with ticks next to completed items.
By May, Crick’s apparatus is set up and photography began, though fiddling with the design and equipment continues. Leaks and problems with the thermocouple emerge as recurrent issues, and phrases such as ‘cursed and went home’, ‘wasted day’, or ‘annoying day’ reoccur throughout. On July 8th, 1938 Crick goes ‘home to brood over (in theory)’ a problem, ‘but actually go[es] to the theatre’! He must have been experiencing concerns about the project, but volume I ends on a positive note, ‘Winter time, a cold wintry morning, and my cold nearly gone after a good weekend. Things seem much brighter’.
Crick was only a few months away from finishing the experiment when the Second World War broke out and he was assigned to military research. However, when peace arrived Crick chose not to complete his original physics PhD. ‘Instead he turned to the borders between physics and other disciplines. Now what, he asked himself, do I chat to other people about? The answer was chromosomes, viruses, and penicillin’ (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Within only six years he was working with Watson on the structure of DNA, one of the key scientific discoveries of the century, if not of all time.
Detailed laboratory notebooks by famous scientists are extremely rare outside of libraries and archives. These were until recently in the possession of Chief Laboratory Assistant Leonard Walden (who is mentioned frequently in the text), and they remain unreferenced by historians. Their reappearance, together with Crick’s typescript funding report, hand-drawn diagram of his equipment, and original photographs, is an incredible opportunity to learn more about this little-known period in the intellectual development of one of the most important scientists of the 20th century.
The Crick notebooks are available to view at 94 New Bond Street and will be exhibited at our stand at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair April 30th-May 3rd, 2026. For more information or to discuss similar books that you would like to purchase or sell, please email Science Specialist Laura Massey.
