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FRANCIS CRICK did not fit the stereotype of a scientific genius. He was not eccentric, shy or even absent-minded. Rather, he was extrovert, loud (his braying laugh often annoyed), gregarious and fond of pretty girls. He was striking-looking, too: tall, with blue eyes.

Worse still for purveyors of clich茅, some of his best thoughts came to him in pubs rather than labs, and were developed through endless conversations, especially with a series of close intellectual partners. Among them were Jim Watson (who described him as 鈥渢he brightest person I have ever known鈥�), Sydney Brenner, who shared a lab and visits to the Eagle pub with Crick for 20 years, and the young neuroscientist Christof Koch, with whom Crick worked for the last 18 years of his life. Special partner or not, the rules were always the same: 鈥渢here was no shame in floating a stupid idea, but no umbrage was to be taken if the other person said it was stupid鈥�.

All this we learn from Matt Ridley鈥檚 biography of Francis Crick, the first account of his life to appear since he died in 2004. It is an excellent, fast-paced tale of a long, astonishing life: Crick could serve as exemplar for late starters and for those who refuse to quit.

Born in 1916 in the English east Midlands, into a family of Northamptonshire shoe manufacturers whose business had gone to pot, he managed only a second-class degree in physics before the second world war arrived, and went off to work on anti-ship mines at the Admiralty. He finally gained a research studentship at Cambridge at the age of 31, and, at 35, as Jim Watson put it, 鈥渉e was almost totally unknown鈥� and most people thought he talked too much鈥�. Yet within a couple of years, in 1953, he and Watson had cracked DNA.

Ridley is right to say that elucidating DNA鈥檚 structure was not Crick鈥檚 greatest achievement. He showed his real genius over the following decades as the central theorist and driving force of the new science of molecular biology. Along the way there were wonderful eureka moments. Ridley tells the story of Crick, Brenner and others interrogating the leading bacterial geneticist Fran莽ois Jacob when: 鈥淪uddenly, Brenner let out a 鈥榶elp鈥�. He began talking fast. Crick began talking back just as fast. Everybody else in the room watched in amazement. Brenner had seen the answer and Crick had seen him see it.鈥� This was the moment they solved the problem of how the DNA code was turned into protein: messenger RNA was read at a ribosome like a tape in a tape reader.

Crick鈥檚 ambitions were always immodest. In 1946, when he decided to re-enter science, he said that he must do something 鈥渉eroic鈥� and 鈥渆xplode a mystery鈥�. The only problem was deciding whether to crack 鈥渢he secret of the brain or the secret of life鈥� first.

It was not until he was in his early 60s that he began to switch from molecular biology to neurobiology, settling at one of the leading research centres, the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. At the late age of 80, Crick wrote with Koch the defining paper on the neural correlate of consciousness; eight years later, on the day he died, Crick was still working on a final, important paper.

So what was it like to work with Crick? Here Ridley鈥檚 scientific biography cannot match Watson鈥檚 intensely personal book, The Double Helix, with his up-close sketches of the unbearably quick-minded Crick refusing to hide from his colleagues that they 鈥渄id not realise the real meaning of their latest experiments鈥�. My own recollection of conversation with Crick was his rejoinder to an idea of mine: 鈥淟et me explain why I think that is nonsense.鈥� This was neither arrogance nor rudeness; he was simply inviting you to join him in argument on his lifelong quest for truth.

鈥淗e was totally unknown鈥� and he talked too much鈥�

That last paper of Crick鈥檚 was typical. He was examining the little-known brain structure called the claustrum, which he thought might be critical in tying together the components of consciousness. Experiments, he felt, were urgently needed. The paper ends: 鈥淲hat could be more important? So why wait?鈥�

As Ridley recounts, on 28 July 2004 Crick was correcting the paper when he 鈥渂ecame semi-coherent, imagining that Christof Koch was there and arguing with him鈥�. Later that day he died. With a little more time, perhaps he would have cracked his second secret too.