Odile Crick | Double-helix artist, 86

Painter Odile Crick, 86, whose most famous drawing was a graceful sketch of the double-helix structure of DNA, died July 5 of cancer at her home in La Jolla, Calif.

Mrs. Crick's illustration of the double helix appeared in a seminal paper by her husband, Francis Crick, and James Watson in an April 1953 issue of the journal Nature (see the illustration via http://go.philly.com/odile).

The men, along with Maurice Wilkins, were credited with the first explanation of DNA and its structure. They shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their work on DNA.

Mrs. Crick's interest in art took her to Vienna in the 1930s and would have led her to the Sorbonne had World War II not broken out. She joined the British Admiralty, where she listened to German radio broadcasts and translated captured torpedo manuals. She met her husband in that office. - AP