Odile Crick

Odile Crick (11 August 1920 – 5 July 2007) was a British artist best known for her drawing of the double helix structure of DNA discovered by Rosalind Franklin and popularised and published by her husband Francis Crick and his partner James D. Watson in 1953.

Early life 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.

Francis Crick and James Watson asked her to draw an illustration of the double helix for their paper on DNA for Nature in 1953. The sketch was reproduced widely in textbooks and scientific articles and has become the symbol for molecular 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 it."

Several exhibitions have been held of Crick's paintings of curvaceous nudes. Her models included their au pairs for the children and her husband's secretaries.

The Cricks became famous for their parties in the 1960s either in Cambridge or at a cottage near Haverhill. At one party, a nude model posed on a couch to encourage their guests to become amateur painters.

Life in California When Francis Crick became a professor at the Salk Institute in the 1970s, the Cricks moved to California.

Odile Crick outlived her husband and died from cancer in La Jolla, California, aged 86. The Odile Crick Memorial Exhibition of her art was held at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, on 12 October 2007.

She was survived by a brother Philippe, her two daughters Gabrielle and Jacqueline (1954–2011), two grandchildren, and her stepson, Michael.