The maiden surname of Francis Crick’s second wife, Odile, was Speed.
Odile Crick was born Odile Speed in King’s Lynn, Norfolk. She studied art and later served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service during the Second World War, where her language skills led to code-breaking and translation work. She met Francis Crick in 1945, after which they married in 1949.
Odile was an artist rather than a laboratory scientist, but she became connected with one of biology’s most famous discoveries. Watson and Crick asked her to draw an illustration of their DNA model for their 1953 *Nature* paper. Her elegant sketch of the double helix became an enduring visual symbol of molecular biology.
The surname can be confused with names associated with other figures in the DNA story. Rosalind Franklin produced crucial X-ray diffraction work, Maurice Wilkins collaborated with the King’s College London research effort, and Doreen Dodd was Crick’s first wife. None of those names was Odile’s maiden surname.