Salk Institute Receives $3M From Son of Nobel Prize Winner

The son of the Nobel Prize-winning co-discoverer of the structure of DNA has pledged close to $3 million to the La Jolla-based Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the research organization announced Friday.

Michael Crick said he will give the institute half the proceeds of the sale of a 1953 letter in which his father, Francis Crick, describes to him the DNA double-helix structure.

The letter sold at auction this week for nearly $6 million, according to Salk.

"Francis Crick was for many years a deeply beloved member of the Salk faculty, who pushed himself and his colleagues to ask profound scientific questions," institute President William Brody said. "The Salk Institute is enormously grateful for having had the privilege to know and work with Francis, and that Michael has chosen to honor his father's memory in this way."

The letter was sent to Michael Crick, who was 12 years old and away at boarding school. It is believed to be the first detailed explanation of the DNA structure, and included a drawing by hand.

It concluded with: "Lots of love Daddy."

Francis Crick joined the Salk Institute in 1976, after retiring from the Medical Research Council in Cambridge, England, and studied visual perception and championed research to discover the neural underpinnings of consciousness for the next 27 years.

Francis Crick, James Watson and Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for their DNA discovery which, according to institute officials, set the direction for modern molecular biology.

—City News Service