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Join us for the Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Prize Lecture given by 2024 winner Professor Matthew Cobb.

Scientists don’t often admit it to themselves, but most scientific discoveries are over-determined. If Watson or Crick had fallen under a bus in 1952, then Franklin, or Wilkins, or Pauling, or someone would soon have discovered the double helix in their place. Furthermore, as Crick put it in 2000, ‘Discoveries and inventions are more important than the people who make them.’ But sometimes the individual does matter. After the double helix was discovered, none of the clever people involved – not Watson, nor Franklin, nor Wilkins, nor Pauling – sought to draw out the deep implications of the structure. Only Crick did that, and his ideas, and the way he proceeded, influenced the course of discovery and the way we now think about genes and cells and evolution. Had Crick fallen under a bus in 1954, the course of science would have been different.

Having spent three intensive years immersed in writing a biography of Crick, Professor Cobb will use his life and work (not just the double helix!) to explore the role of individuals in scientific discovery and the importance of recent attempts to diversify the pool of scientists, something that is currently under attack.


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