Francis Crick's glamorous rival

Francis Crick, best known, along with James Watson, for the co-discovery of the structure of DNA, is dead at age 88. Both men are justly celebrated for this groundbreaking achievement, which effectively created the field of molecular biology and revolutionized modern medicine.

However, in recent decades Crick had turned his attention to the scientific exploration of human consciousness. His "findings" are set forth in Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. What is Crick's hypothesis? Just this:

“YOU”, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. It does not come easily to most people to believe that I am the detailed behavior of a set of nerve cells, however many there may be and however intricate their interactions. . . . As Lewis Carroll's Alice might have phrased it: "You're nothing but a pack of neurons." [emphasis mine]

Sorry, Dr. Crick. Someone else got there first, namely Greta Garbo's cinematic character Ninotchka, in response to Melvyn Douglas' amorous overtures: “Why must you bring in the wrong values? Love is a romantic designation for a most ordinary biological -- or, shall we say, chemical? -- process. A lot of nonsense is written about it.” The differences between Crick and Garbo are twofold: First, Garbo knew she was playing for laughs while Crick was deadly serious. Second, Garbo never managed to win the Nobel Prize.