Background
Crick was born in Ampthill, Bedfordshire on 9 October 1856.
Crick was born in Ampthill, Bedfordshire on 9 October 1856.
He was the son of Doctor Francis William Crick and educated at Bedford Modern School and the Royal School of Mines. Between January 1881 and 1886, Crick was employed as Assistant Secretary to Sir Warington Smyth, Chairman of "Her Majesty Commission to enquire into Accidents in Mines, et cetera". In the same year and in a voluntary capacity, Crick joined the Geological Department of the Natural History Museum, London.
At the Natural History Museum Crick was commissioned to catalogue the fossil Cephalopoda (Belemnites and the Ammonites) and ‘throwing his whole heart into the work left it one of the best arranged and indexed collections’ at the Museum.
He was appointed a First Assistant of the Museum in 1904. In the course of his career Crick wrote sixty-seven papers that were published in various scientific journals including seven written in association with Arthur Humphrys Foord and one with Richard Bullen Newton who was also a first assistant at the Natural History Museum.
His work included the description of seventy-four new species and the description of three new genera: Amphoreopsis, Styracoteuthis, and Belemnocamax. Crick was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of London in 1881, a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London in 1896 and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1916.