Odile Crick dies at 86
Odile Crick in 2003, at a dinner celebrating the 50th anniversary of the historical discovery, and her sketch that appeared in the 1953 paper. Images from the New York Times.Odile Crick, who drew the double helix diagram in the 1953 Nature paper that announced the structure of DNA, died this month at 86. She was the wife of Francis Crick, the co-author of the paper with James Watson. They asked her to draw the image because “Francis can’t draw, and I can’t draw, and we need something done quick,” said James Watson. Her sketch, which was a “purely diagrammatic” representation of the 3-D structure of DNA, became iconic. The New York Times article that reported her death reveals Crick to have been a pretty extraordinary lady. She relocated to Britain in 1938 when the Nazis occupied Austria, where she was an art student in Vienna. She joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service and because she was fluent in German, became a code-breaker and translater of secret documents during the war.