Alexander Rawson Stokes was a British physicist at Royal Holloway College, London and later at King's College London.
11 Facts About Alec Stokes
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Alec Stokes was most recognised as a co-author of the second of the three papers published sequentially in Nature on 25 April 1953 describing the correct molecular structure of DNA.
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Alec Stokes received a first-class degree in the natural science tripos in 1940 at Trinity College, Cambridge and then researched X-ray crystallography of Imperfect Crystals for his PhD in 1943 under the supervision of Lawrence Bragg at the Cavendish Laboratory.
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Alec Stokes lectured in physics at Royal Holloway College, London before joining John Randall's Biophysics Research Unit at King's College London in 1947.
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Alec Stokes has been credited as being the first person to demonstrate that the DNA molecule was probably helical in shape.
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Maurice Wilkins wrote in his autobiography that he asked Alec Stokes to predict what a helical structure would look like as an x-ray diffraction photograph, and that he was able to determine this by the next day through mathematical calculations made during a short train journey.
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Alec Stokes continued to work on optical diffraction in large biological molecules.
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Alec Stokes's publications include the books The Theory of the Optical Properties of Inhomogeneous Materials.
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Alec Stokes retired from King's College London as a senior lecturer in 1982.
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Alec Stokes was a choral singer, played the piano and was an elder in his local free church, in Welwyn Garden City.
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Alec Stokes died on 5 February 2003, survived by his wife, Margaret, two sons, Gordon Stokes and Ian Stokes and a daughter, Jean Stokes.