. Wilkins

Maurice Wilkins was born at Pongaroa, New Zealand, in 1916. He studied physics at Cambridge, graduating in 1938, and went on to work in J. T. (later Sir John) Randall's research group at Birmingham. In 1944 he moved to Berkeley, California, to work on the Manhattan Project. After the war he joined Randall's new biophysics group at St Andrews. The group moved in 1946 to King's College London and it was here where Wilkins began X-ray diffraction studies of DNA. These X-ray measurements, made with...See more

Maurice Wilkins was born at Pongaroa, New Zealand, in 1916. He studied physics at Cambridge, graduating in 1938, and went on to work in J. T. (later Sir John) Randall's research group at Birmingham. In 1944 he moved to Berkeley, California, to work on the Manhattan Project. After the war he joined Randall's new biophysics group at St Andrews. The group moved in 1946 to King's College London and it was here where Wilkins began X-ray diffraction studies of DNA. These X-ray measurements, made with Rosalind Franklin and others, eventually established the correctness of the double helix structure of DNA proposed in 1953 by Watson and Crick at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. In 1962, Crick, Watson, and Wilkins were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for this discovery. Emeritus Professor of Biophysics at King's College London, Maurice Wilkins lives in London with his wife Pat. See less