Maurice Wilkins: 1916–2004

Abstract

Maurice Wilkins, who shared a Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA's structure, died last month aged 87. Wilkins was still associated with King's College London, where he had worked since 1946.Many years after his colleagues, James Watson and Francis Crick, had published their recollections of the momentous events leading up to the publication of the famous Nature paper on the structure of DNA in 1953, Wilkins produced his autobiography only last year (see the review by Walter Gratzer, Breaking The Silence Curr. Biol. 13, R945-R946).The title billed him as ‘The Third Man of the Double Helix’. Wilkins' fellow 1962 prize winners, often won more plaudits for their realisation that the DNA molecule forms a double helix.But Wilkins' research provided the proof that Watson and Crick needed to back up their theory about DNA's structure. He pioneered a technique which can reveal the molecular structure of biological material such as collagen or DNA.Wilkins worked on the DNA project with Rosalind Franklin, who took the X-ray photograph that gave Watson and Crick their key insight. He then spent almost 10 years rigorously verifying that breakthrough.During the Second World War, Wilkins had worked briefly on the Manhattan Project. He made improvements to the process that separated radioactive atoms of uranium from its more stable isotope. Later in life he was extremely active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and became founding president of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science.Lord May of Oxford, President of the Royal Society said: “Wilkins, working with Rosalind Franklin, used a technique called X-ray crystallography to investigate the molecular structure of DNA and found that the long chains of DNA were arranged in the form of a double helix. Watson and Crick then used this data to show that the organic bases of DNA were paired in a specific manner in the intertwined helices.”“While Watson and Crick have rightly been recognised across the world for their contribution, the roles of Wilkins and Franklin, which were crucial, have not always been fully acknowledged outside the scientific community,” he says.But Wilkins “will always be remembered for the part he played in discovering the structure of DNA,” says May.“Professor Wilkins was a towering figure, one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century and a man of immense humility,” says Rick Trainor, Principal of King's College London.