Wilkins, Maurice Hugh Frederick

▪ 2005

      New Zealand-born British biophysicist (b. Dec. 15, 1916, Pongaroa, N.Z.—d. Oct. 5, 2004, London, Eng.), used X-ray crystallography to investigate the DNA molecule and thereby contributed to the discovery of DNA's structure by James Watson and Francis Crick (q.v. (Crick, Francis Harry Compton )), with whom he shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Wilkins's role in unraveling the structure of DNA was less well known than that of the more celebrated Watson and Crick; at his lab at King's College, London, in the early 1950s, Wilkins (with his colleague Rosalind Franklin) used the then-new technique of X-ray crystallography to study the chemical bonds and atomic orientation of the DNA molecule. Meanwhile, Watson and Crick were trying to elucidate the molecule's structure by building models in their laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Franklin's and Wilkins's findings helped the Cambridge duo determine the correct model for the physical structure of DNA. In 1953 the findings of Wilkins and Franklin were published in the same issue of the journal Nature as those of Watson and Crick, but the latter two scientists received most of the world's attention. (Franklin died in 1958, before the Nobel Prize was awarded.) Wilkins studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, and the University of Birmingham and worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. After the war he switched to studying biological systems and became an ardent voice for nuclear disarmament, helping to establish the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science in 1969. Wilkins was made CBE in 1963. His autobiography, The Third Man of the Double Helix (2003), offered a reflective account of the atmosphere surrounding the DNA studies of 50 years earlier.

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