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Crick Nobel Prize Medal Sells for $2.27 million


The Nobel Prize medal won 50 years ago by Francis Crick for his co-discovery of DNA sold for $2.27 million Thursday at Heritage Auctions in New York.

Working in Cambridge, England, Crick and James Watson unraveled the double-helix structure and function of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1962.

Wednesday, a letter Crick wrote to his son describing the discovery sold at Christie's auction house for $6 million. That's a record for a letter, eclipsing the price of an Abraham Lincoln letter that sold for $3.4 million in 2008.

The items were among 11 artifacts Crick's heirs offered at auction. A portion of the auction proceeds will go to the Francis Crick Institute in London and the Salk Institute in California, where Crick closed his career and died in 2004 at age 88.



Heritage Auctions identified the buyer of the medal as Jack Wang, CEO of Biomobie, a medicine technology company in Silicon Valley and Shanghai. The price surpassed the pre-sale estimate of $500,000.
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