"Secret of Life"

Well, we all know what the ultimate secret to success in life is; love. Some know how to practise it, and value it and how meaningfully love complements life and some do not. Some people recognize what love requires to keep it healthy and strong and others simply shrug, disinterested. The greater number of people want love but cannot find it and sometimes that can be because they really don't know what it represents, how to practise and nourish it.

What comes naturally enough for some people, enabling them to enjoy a long-lasting and rewarding intimate relationship with at least one other person in their lives, is difficult to attain for many others who may pantomime the practise of living with love but their emotions are as empty as the words used in a silent pantomime. Often, parents raise children with great heapings of love and emotional support.

One might logically expect that the children would reciprocate, not only in their formative years but well beyond, when they mature and become adults. Yet this is not necessarily the case. As the excellent Bavarian film "Cherry Blossoms", set in Munich and Tokyo pointed out so movingly. One might think that children of an individual whose brilliant mind was partially responsible for revealing one of the genetic-biological secrets of life would value his father's memory almost beyond all else.

And one might be incorrect in that assumption. Take, for example, the British-born scientist Francis Crick who together with his American colleague, James Watson, discovered the famed double helix structure of DNA:

"Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery. We have built a model for the structure of de-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid (read it carefully) called D.N.A. for short. You may remember that the genes of the chromosomes -- which carry the hereditary factors -- are made up of protein and D.N.A. ...Now we believe that the D.N.A. is  a code..."
"You can understand that we are very excited. Read this carefully so that you understand it. When you come home we will show you the model. Lots of love, Daddy."

The above is excerpted from a seven-page letter that Francis Crick had written to his then-12-year-old son away at school, 60 years ago. "...the basic copying mechanism by which life comes from life", explained the letter to the boy. The young Michael Crick was recovering from flu, he was in his boarding school's infirmary, when his father's letter reached him on March 19, 1953. And now, all these years later, Michael Crick wrote in a catalog essay for Christie's auction house in New York City:

"It became immediately obvious how the base pairs could act as a code -- and also how that code might be copied. It was just 'so beautiful' it had to be right. My father's enthusiasm could not be contained. The story is told of him sweeping excitedly into a local pub called the Eagle and announcing to all who would listen that he had found 'the secret of life'. ...The first public description of these ideas that have become the keystone of molecular biology and which have spawned a whole new industry and generation of follow-on discoveries."

For it seems that Nobel Laureate Francis Crick's son decided to sell that letter from his father to himself as a young boy through Christie's Auction House. "My wife, Barbara, and I therefore decided that we would donate a significant portion of the proceeds from the sale of the letters to benefit the Salk to help fund continuing research in ways that my father would have wanted." This, in reference to the Crick-Jacobs Centre for Theoretical and Computational Biology, devoted to brain research, co-founded by his father.

Christie's /Francis Crick sketched this diagram of the DNA double-helix molecule in a 1953 letter to his son, Michael. "The model looks much nicer than this," the elder Crick wrote. 

One might think that the scion of such a world-shattering scientific discovery, might wish to continue treasuring his father's letter to his son, as an intimate piece of treasired memorabilia. Failing that, to make a generous gift of the historical document to an academic institution, say for example Cambridge where his father also did some of his research and where he met James Watson. Failing that, sell the document, if he felt so disposed, and render all of its avails to biological research.

The letter realized -- including a buyer's premium -- $6,059,750. It went to an anonymous buyer. There were other handwritten documents, pencil diagrams and equations that were sold as well. And yet other additional items were sent to auction through Heritage Auctions based in Dallas, for New York sale; items belonging to the Francis Crick Family Trust. Notably, Francis Crick's Nobel Prize medal, and the diploma, and a few other documents, all of which went as a lot at $2,270,500. The bidder was prepared, he said, to pay double that amount.

Bebeto Matthews / AP /Michael Crick holds the 1962 Nobel Prize medal that was awarded to his father, with his daughter, Kendra Crick, standing by his side. The medal is to be sold during a New York auction on Thursday.