| Home Page
About DNA
History
Rosalind Franklin
Francis Crick
James Watson
Maurice Wilkins
Cloning
Fingerprinting
What if...
Glossary
Guest Book Page
|
|
Maurice Wilkins
Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins was born on 15th December, 1916, in Pongaroa, New Zealand. His father was a doctor. When he was six, Wilkins was brought back to England and was educated in Birmingham. He went to St. John's College Cambridge to study physics. He got his degree in 1938. Then he went to Birmingham University where he was a research assistant in the Physics Department. In 1940, he got a PhD. He moved to the Manhattan Project in California..
When the war finished, he became a lecturer at St. Andrews University in Scotland. Here, Professor Randall was organising biophysical studies and Wilkins transferred his attentions to this. The biophysics project moved to King's College, London. In London, he was a teacher at the Medical Research Council Biophysics Research Unit. He began X-ray diffraction of DNA and sperm heads. The discovery of the clear patterns lead to the find of the molecule structure of DNA. More studies proved that the Watson-Crick suggestion for DNA structure was right. Wilkins wrote some books about DNA.
|
|
|
|
Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins
Well known for his research into DNA. |
|
|
|
Pongaroa, New Zealand
Wilkins was born here but his family moved to Birmingham in England. |
|
|
|
|
Wilkins was made Assistant Director of the Medical Research Council Unit in 1950 and Deputy Director in 1955. He was made Honorary Lecturer of a sup-department of Biophysics in King's College. He was elected F.R.S. in 1959 and was given the Albert Lasker Award with Watson and Crick. He was made Companion of the British Empire in 1962.Also in 1962, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine along with Crick and Watson.
In 1959, he married Patricia Chidgey and they have a daughter Sarah and a son George. He likes collecting sculptures and gardening.
|
The Crest of St. Andrews
Wilkins was a lecturer in Physics here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
