The list in the parent comment was "legendary geniuses." Crick was certainly not that. He did a physics degree then did a bunch of half-assed work in biology. H

The list in the parent comment was "legendary geniuses." Crick was certainly not that. He did a physics degree then did a bunch of half-assed work in biology. He stole some data, confounded the idea of gene and open reading frame so thoroughly that we're still trying to undo the damage decades later, and summarized a lot of early molecular biology results in an oversimplified way (the "central dogma") that we're still trying to teach people the real nuances of. On the whole he and Watson were probably a net negative for science. As for polymath, he certainly wasn't that. I've done physics, biology, statistics, software engineering, violinist, composer, dance historian, learned a bunch of languages, and written a novel. I'm a pretty pedestrian level polymath, and Crick was nowhere near me.