The iconic vision of Odile Crick

Odile Crick's illustration of the
double-helix structure of DNA.

As this week marks the 60th Anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, I wanted to write a post about the artist who first illustrated it.

Odile Crick (1920 - 2007) was an artist working in watercolour and pastel, embracing the female form in fabulously Rubenesque nudes. In 1938 she was studying art in Vienna and had to return to Britain when the Nazis occupied Austria. Odile married the Nobel Prize winning scientist Francis H. C. Crick in 1949.

James D. Watson and Crick, asked Odile  to create a sketch based on their mathematical analysis of the pattern of spots revealed by X-ray crystallography (published in the April 1953 issue of the journal Nature). The ribbon-like structure Odile created became an iconic illustration. Watson explained "Francis can't draw, and I can't draw, and we need something done quick," he said that the drawing "showed the essence of the structure,".

Terrence Sejnowski, the Francis Crick professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, in La Jolla, said Odile Crick’s sketch “has iconic importance beyond its scientific value; it came to symbolize man’s discovery of the biological basis of life and evolution.”

This sketch by Francis Crick was his
first impression of the DNA double-helix

Odile, was confidently able to work this rough sketch by Francis Crick into the elegantly flowing image that we are all so familiar with today.

The collaboration of artists working with scientists holds a particular interest for me. I have a fine art degree, but for many years worked as an artist/graphic designer for the NHS. Scientists are often very good a knowing what they want something to look like in their minds, but aren't always able to express those thoughts visually.

It can be clearly seen here that Odile was taking the core ideas of Crick's scribble, presenting them as an illustration revealing the two phosphate-sugar chains with the pairs of bases that hold them together. She also captured in her rather succinct diagram the three-dimensional nature of the structure, visualising the written words of the paper allowing Watson and Crick to capture the imagination of the world.