Odile Crick

Background

Odile Crick was born as Odile Speed in King"s Lynn, Norfolk, England, to a French mother, Marie-Therese Josephine Jaeger and an English father, Alfred Valentine Speed, who was a jeweller.

Education

After the war, she finished her art studies at Saint Martin"s in London.

Career

She was an art student in Vienna when the Nazis occupied Austria in 1938. Speed joined the Women"s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) as a lorry driver. However, her skills in German led to work as a code-breaker and translator at the Admiralty where she met Francis Crick in 1945.

Odile Speed married Francis Crick in 1949 and lived in Cambridge.

The sketch was reproduced widely in textbooks and scientific articles and has become the symbol for molecular biology. Terrence J. Sejnowski of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies said, "lieutenant may be the most famous drawing of the 20th century, in that it defines modern biology." However, she was not aware at first of the importance of the discovery.

In his memoir What Mad Pursuit, Crick said that she had told him later "You were always coming home and saying things like that, so naturally I thought nothing of lieutenant" Several exhibitions have been held of Crick"s paintings of curvaceous nudes. At one party, a nude model posed on a couch to encourage their guests to become amateur painters.

The Odile Crick Memorial Exhibition of her art was held at the Salk Institute, Louisiana Jolla, on 12 October 2007.

Achievements

• The Cricks became famous for their parties in the 1960s either in Cambridge or at a cottage near Haverhill.