Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins
was born at Pongaroa, New Zealand, on December 15th, 1916. His parents came from
Ireland; his father Edgar Henry Wilkins was a doctor in the School Medical Service
and was very interested in research but had little opportunity for it.
At the age of 6, Wilkins was brought to England and educated at King Edward's
School, Birmingham. He studied physics at St. John's College, Cambridge, taking
his degree in 1938. He then went to Birmingham University, where he became research
assistant to Dr. J. T. Randall in the Physics Department. They studied the luminescence
of solids. He obtained a Ph.D. in 1940, his thesis being mainly on a study of
thermal stability of trapped electrons in phosphors, and on the theory of phosphorescence,
in terms of electron traps with continuous distribution of trap depths. He then
applied these ideas to various war-time problems such as improvement of cathoderay
tube screens for radar. Next he worked under Professor M. L. E. Oliphant on mass
spectrograph separation of uranium isotopes for use in bombs and, shortly after,
moved with others from Birmingham to the Manhattan Project in Berkeley, California,
where these studies continued.
In 1945, when the war was over, he
was lecturer in physics at St. Andrews' University, Scotland, where Professor
J. T. Randall was organizing biophysical studies. He had spent seven years in
physics research and now began in biophysics. The biophysics project moved in
1946 to King's College, London, where he was a member of the staff of the newly
formed Medical Research Council Biophysics Research Unit. He was first concerned
with genetic effects of ultrasonics; after one or two years, he changed his research
to development of reflecting microscopes for ultraviolet microspectrophotometric
study of nucleic acids in cells. He also studied the orientation of purines and
pyrimidines in tobacco mosaic virus and in nucleic acids, by measuring the ultraviolet
dichroism of oriented specimens, and he studied, with the visible-light polarizing
microscope, the arrangement of virus particles in crystals of TMV and measured
dry mass in cells with interference microscopes. He then began X-ray diffraction
studies of DNA and sperm heads. The discovery of the well-defined patterns led
to the deriving of the molecular structure of DNA. Further X-ray studies established
the correctness of the Watson-Crick proposal for DNA structure. Relevant publications
are «The molecular configuration of deoxyribonucleic acid. I. X-ray diffraction
study of a crystalline form of the lithium salt», by R. Langridge, H. R.
Wilson, C. W. Hooper, M. H. F. Wilkins, and L. D. Hamilton in J. Mol. Biol.,
2 (1960) 19, and «Determination of the helical configuration of ribonucleic
acid molecules by X-ray diffraction study of crystalline amino-acid-transfer ribonucleic
acid», by M. Spencer, W. Fuller, M. H. F. Wilkins, and G. L. Brown in Nature,
194 (1962) 1014.
Wilkins became Assistant Director of the Medical
Research Council Unit in 1950 and Deputy Director in 1955. A sub-department of
Biophysics was formed in King's College, and he was made Honorary Lecturer in
it. In 1961 a full Department of Biophysics was established.
He was
elected F.R.S. in 1959, given the Albert Lasker Award (jointly with Watson and
Crick) by the American Public Health Association in 1960, and made Companion of
the British Empire in 1962.
He married Patricia Ann Chidgey in 1959;
they have a daughter Sarah and a son George. He finds his recreations in his collection
of sculptures and in gardening.
From Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1942-1962, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964
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United States, IL, Chicago, English, Italian, Genry, Male, 21-25, bodybulding, swiming.
For
more updated biographical information, see:
Wilkins, Maurice, The Third
Man of the Double Helix: The Autobiography of Maurice Wilkins. Oxford University
Press, Oxford, 2003.
Maurice Wilkins died on October 5, 2004.