Maurice Wilkins (1916–2004,) fully Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins, was a New Zealand-born British biochemist and molecular biologist. His work on the double helix structure of the DNA won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with biologists Francis Crick and James Watson.)
Born in Pongaroa, New Zealand, and educated at King Edward’s School-Birmingham, and St John’s College-Cambridge, Wilkins researched uranium isotope separation at the University of California in 1944. He joined the Medical Research Council’s Biophysics Research Unit at King’s College-London in 1946, becoming its director (1970–72) and professor of biophysics (1970–81; then emeritus.)
From X-ray diffraction analysis of the DNA, Wilkins and his colleague Rosalind Franklin validated the double helix structure proposed by the University of Cambridge biologists Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953. Crick, Watson, and Wilkins won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Wilkins also published on light microscopy techniques for cytochemical research.
Wilkins’s autobiography is The Third Man of the Double Helix (2003.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Maurice Wilkins
It is essential for genetic material to be able to make exact copies of itself; otherwise growth would produce disorder, life could not originate, and favourable forms would not be perpetuated by natural selection.
—Maurice Wilkins
Topics: Disorder
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