32 Facts About Maurice Wilkins

Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins was a New Zealand-born British biophysicist and Nobel laureate whose research spanned multiple areas of physics and biophysics, contributing to the scientific understanding of phosphorescence, isotope separation, optical microscopy and X-ray diffraction, and to the development of radar.

Maurice Wilkins is known for his work at King's College London on the structure of DNA.

Maurice Wilkins was born in Pongaroa, New Zealand, where his father, Edgar Henry Maurice Wilkins, was a medical doctor.

Maurice Wilkins's family had come from Dublin, where his paternal and maternal grandfathers were, respectively, Headmaster of Dublin High School and a Chief of Police.

Maurice Wilkins went to St John's College, Cambridge in 1935; he studied the Natural Sciences Tripos, specialising in Physics, and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1938.

Maurice Wilkins became a PhD student of Randall at the University of Birmingham.

Maurice Wilkins brought Wilkins with him as Assistant Director of the unit.

At King's College, Maurice Wilkins pursued, among other things, X-ray diffraction work on ram sperm and DNA that had been obtained from calf thymus by the Swiss scientist Rudolf Signer.

Maurice Wilkins discovered that it was possible to produce thin threads from this concentrated DNA solution that contained highly ordered arrays of DNA suitable for the production of X-ray diffraction patterns.

At that time Maurice Wilkins introduced Francis Crick to the importance of DNA.

Maurice Wilkins knew that proper experiments on the threads of purified DNA would require better X-ray equipment.

Maurice Wilkins ordered a new X-ray tube and a new microcamera.

Maurice Wilkins suggested to Randall that the soon-to-be-appointed Rosalind Franklin should be reassigned from work on protein solutions to join the DNA effort.

Maurice Wilkins was away on holiday and missed an initial meeting at which Raymond Gosling stood in for him along with Alex Stokes, who, like Crick, would solve the basic mathematics that make possible a general theory of how helical structures diffract X-rays.

Maurice Wilkins returned to the laboratory expecting, on the other hand, that Franklin would be his collaborator and that they would work together on the DNA project that he had started.

Maurice Wilkins met with Watson and Crick and told them about his results.

Crick tried to get Maurice Wilkins to continue with additional molecular modeling efforts, but Maurice Wilkins did not take this approach.

Early in 1952, Maurice Wilkins began a series of experiments on sepia sperm which were very encouraging.

Maurice Wilkins was handicapped because Franklin had all of the good DNA.

Maurice Wilkins got new DNA samples, but it was not as good as the original sample he had obtained in 1950 and which Franklin continued to use.

In early 1953 Watson visited King's College and Maurice Wilkins showed him a high quality image of the B-form X-ray diffraction pattern, now identified as photograph 51, that Franklin had produced in March 1952.

Maurice Wilkins had shown this image produced by Franklin without notifying or receiving authorization from the principal investigator who produced the image.

Maurice Wilkins became deputy director of the MRC Biophysics Unit at King's in 1955, and succeeded Randall as director of the unit from 1970 to 1972.

Maurice Wilkins was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1959 and an EMBO Member in 1964.

From 1969 to 1991, Maurice Wilkins was the founding President of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science.

In 2000, King's College London opened the Franklin-Maurice Wilkins Building in honour of Dr Franklin's and Professor Maurice Wilkins' work at the college.

Maurice Wilkins's first wife, Ruth, was an art student whom he met whilst he was at Berkeley.

Maurice Wilkins married his second wife Patricia Ann Chidgey in 1959.

Maurice Wilkins joined the Communist Party, until the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Army in September 1939.

Formerly classified UK security service papers reveal that Maurice Wilkins came under suspicion of leaking atomic secrets.

The files, released in August 2010, indicate surveillance of Maurice Wilkins ended by 1953.

Maurice Wilkins published his autobiography, The Third Man of the Double Helix, in 2003.