Online Encyclopedia
Categories: 1916 births | 2004 deaths | New Zealand scientists | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winners | University of Birmingham alumni
Maurice Wilkins
Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins (December 15, 1916 – October 5, 2004) was a physicist who mainly worked in the field of X-rays.
Wilkins was born in Pongaroa , north Wairarapa, New Zealand, but his family moved to England when he was six. He studied physics at St. John's College, Cambridge, then in 1940 received his Ph.D. in physics at Birmingham University. During World War II he worked on the Manhattan Project at the University of California, Berkeley before returning to King's College, London.
At King's College he pursued, among other things X-ray diffraction work. It was his work, along with that of his colleague Rosalind Franklin that led James D. Watson and Francis Crick to deduce the structure of DNA in 1953; he went on to prove that the double-helical structure they proposed was indeed correct.
In 1962 he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Watson and Crick. Wilkins' reputation was untarnished although it was he who obtained Rosalind Franklin's x-ray images without permission to help deduce the structure of DNA. Franklin's name was excluded from the authors of the famous paper in the esteemed science journal Nature.
He published his autobiography, "The Third Man of the Double Helix," in 2003. He died a year later. At the time of his death, he was still a member of King's College London staff.
External links
- Biography (from Nobel)
- Biography (from the New Zealand Edge)
- Obituary from King's College London
- Biography (from University of Canterbury)
- Story of Watson, Crick, Wilson and Franklin (from Chemical Heritage Foundation)
- List of classic papers in Nature on DNA structure
- DNA: The King's Story detailing Wilkins' involvement in elucidating the structure of DNA
- Death of Maurice Wilkins
Categories: 1916 births | 2004 deaths | New Zealand scientists | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winners | University of Birmingham alumni