[BITList] The third man

[John Feltham]

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Wilkins,  Maurice Hugh Frederick  (1916-2004), molecular biologist, was born at Pongaroa, North Island, New Zealand, on 15 December 1916, the son of Edgar Henry Wilkins, medical practitioner, and his wife, Eveline Constance Jane, nee Whittaker. Both his parents were of Irish descent. William Wilkins, headmaster of Dublin high school, was his grandfather, and George Wilkins, professor of Hebrew at Trinity College, Dublin, was a great-uncle. In 1923 his father, a doctor in the school medical service (and an educated man, a vegetarian, and would-be epidemiologist), obtained a post in Birmingham, and the family moved to England.

Wilkins was educated at Wylde Green primary school and King Edward's School, Birmingham. While a young boy he developed a keen interest in astronomy, and in optics, and constructed his own telescopes and microscopes in a workshop his father built for him. He won a scholarship to St John's College, Cambridge, to study physics; one of his tutors was Mark Oliphant, until the latter's move to Birmingham in 1937. At Cambridge he was active in the university Socialist Society, and the Cambridge Scientists' Anti-War Group; he also joined the Communist Party. Perhaps as a result of spending so much time on political activities he gained a disappointing lower second in part two of the natural science tripos in 1938. Nevertheless his tutor Oliphant had been impressed by his ability and his interest in thermoluminescence and phosphorescence, and as a result of Oliphant's recommendation John Randall took Wilkins on as a research student at the University of Birmingham, in his luminescence research group. Wilkins obtained his PhD in 1940 for a thesis on thermoluminescence in solids, and was recruited by the Ministry of Home Security and Aircraft Production to work on the improvement of radar screens. Next he worked under Oliphant as part of the Tube Alloys project, studying the feasibility of producing an atomic bomb, his own role being to make mass spectrograph studies of the separation of uranium isotopes. In 1944 he followed Oliphant to the University of California at Berkeley, to work on the Manhattan project (to produce an atomic bomb). He stayed there for one year, during which time he contracted a short-lived marriage to an art student named Ruth, with whom he had one son. Like Oliphant he became increasingly concerned at the ethical implications of atomic weapons, especially after the dropping of an atom bomb on Hiroshima and another on Nagasaki, and he resolved not to pursue a career in atomic physics. Instead he turned to biophysics, the application of physics to biology.

In 1945 Wilkins rejoined Randall's research group, first at St Andrews University, then from 1946 at King's College, London, where Randall had been appointed Wheatstone professor of physics, and where the Medical Research Council had provided funds for a new Biophysics Research Unit. Wilkins remained at King's until his retirement in 1981, becoming deputy director of the biophysics research unit in 1955 and in 1970 succeeding Randall as director of the unit (subsequently renamed the neurobiology unit in 1972 and the cell biophysics unit in 1974). He was appointed a lecturer in biophysics in 1958, professor of molecular biology in 1963, and professor of biophysics in 1970. On 14 March 1959 he married Patricia Ann (Pat) Chidgey, a 27-year-old schoolteacher for London county council, and daughter of William James Chidgey, transport official. They had two sons and two daughters.

Having read the physicist Erwin Schrodinger's little book What is Life? (1944) Wilkins had become enthusiastic to explore the nature of the gene. Instead of treating fruit flies with X-rays or chemicals he explored the effects of ultrasonics on chromosomes. In London he soon dropped this unpromising research when Randall handed over to him a topic from his research programme on spermatozoa-a study of the changing distribution of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) in the living cell. For this agenda Wilkins skilfully developed a reflecting microscope that could be used with optical, ultraviolet, or infra-red light.

In the spring of 1947 Wilkins received a visit from a physicist who, like him, wanted to switch to biophysics and was seeking a host laboratory. This was Francis Crick. The latter was not attracted by what he saw. Wilkins's ultrasonic research had not yet been dropped, and the laboratory programme as a whole was at the cellular level. Crick wanted to work at the molecular level. None the less Wilkins's enthusiasm and his friendliness attracted Crick and they became lifelong friends.

The topic that Randall handed to Wilkins brought him face to face with DNA. Then he learned from his young colleague Geoffrey Brown about the evidence at the Rockefeller University, New York, that DNA has the power to transmit hereditary qualities. Another colleague, Gerald Oster, urged Wilkins to turn from his microscopes to X-ray crystallography to study the structure of DNA. Already he had one of the glass phials containing the excellent DNA preparation that the Swiss biochemist Rudolf Signer had offered at a meeting in London in May 1950. The purpose for which the unit had been funded did not include X-ray crystallography. Nevertheless Wilkins and Randall's graduate student Raymond Gosling succeeded in producing the first crystalline diffraction pattern of DNA with clear spots (intensities) by the dozen. Gosling and the theoretician Alec Stokes established the character of this crystalline DNA as monoclinic C2, thus defining the kind of symmetry it possessed. These details they did not publish, but speaking in 1951 at a conference at the Naples Zoological Station, Wilkins showed a slide of their crystalline DNA diffraction pattern and remarked that such studies 'may help one to approach more closely the problem of gene structure'  (Wilkins, 'Ultraviolet diochroism and molecular structure in living cells', Pubblicazioni della Stazione Zoologica di Napoli, 23, 1951, suppl., 105). In the audience was James Watson. Now, the latter judged, it ought to be possible to solve the structure of the genetic material. Thus had Wilkins lighted the fuse that was to set Watson off on a trail leading to the solution of the structure of DNA.

By this time Wilkins had been joined at the King's laboratory by Rosalind Franklin, a crystallographer and post-doctoral fellow hired by Randall to study proteins in solution. At Wilkins's nudging, Randall suggested and Franklin agreed to work on DNA instead. But she and Wilkins clashed, and while Wilkins was on holiday Randall effectively sidelined him, giving Franklin to believe that she would have sole oversight of the X-ray work on DNA, transferring the talented Gosling to her supervision, and entrusting to her the DNA sample originally provided to Wilkins by Signer. Wilkins continued to work on DNA, but from much poorer-quality samples, and from this point there was in effect no collaboration and very little communication between him and Franklin. The latter succeeded in distinguishing two forms of DNA, for besides the crystalline 'A' form discovered by Wilkins and Gosling she found a new form, the 'wet' or 'B' form, and was able to convert the one form into the other by changing the humidity. In May 1952 she and Gosling further succeeded in obtaining a superb photograph (known as 'photograph 51') of the diffraction pattern of the B form, but she set this to one side until 1953 in order to concentrate her effort on the crystalline form. When, in 1953, she returned to the B form she came close to solving the diffraction pattern before she left the unit to work at Birkbeck College, London, under J. D. Bernal. Her departure relieved the tensions Wilkins had been under. But he had already been preparing for an onslaught on DNA, and had been collaborating with a new post-doctoral fellow, Herbert Wilson, who had been working at the unit since the autumn of 1952. At this point Gosling passed on to Wilkins a copy of 'photograph 51'. Wilkins showed it to Watson, Watson described it to Crick, and a month later the Watson-Crick model was born in Cambridge (on 28 February). Their famous paper appeared in Nature on 25 April 1953. They had invited Wilkins to add his name to the paper but he declined. Instead he contributed a paper (published in the same issue of Nature) with Stokes and Herbert Wilson, alongside another by Franklin and Gosling, reporting their X-ray diffraction work.

Not until Wilkins wrote his autobiography, The Third Man of the Double Helix (2003), did he reflect publicly on the events so skilfully described in Watson's best-seller, The Double Helix, thirty-five years before. Angered by the tone and frankness of Watson's manuscript, Wilkins, together with Crick, had succeeded in preventing its publication by Harvard University Press, but not its publication elsewhere. From the several accounts by the actors in the DNA 'drama' it is clear that Wilkins was his own worst enemy. Had he stood up to Randall and Franklin, refused to leave the bench, and demanded effective collaboration, the leadership in the pursuit of the structure of DNA might not have been snatched from the group at King's.

Wilkins had been deeply hurt but not deterred from pursuing DNA. The Watson-Crick model was a proposal, supported by the work from King's College, but in need of more detailed support. Until that could be provided there would be debate and sniping over alternative structures. Wilkins and his group worked long and hard to enrich the data and to refine the model. They concentrated on the positions of the bases and the phosphates in the model, and in the process they corrected the erroneous shape of the sugars, the ring structure of which can take either of two different forms, one found in crystalline DNA, the other in the B form. Watson and Crick had used the wrong form in their model for the latter, causing the bases to be too far from the centre of the cylindrical molecule and rendering them less accessible from outside.

When in 1962 DNA was the subject of the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, the work of the biophysics research unit at King's was recognized. Rosalind Franklin had died in 1958. But Wilkins was included in the award. He had initiated the DNA studies at King's, with Gosling had discovered the A form, had shown that the diffraction pattern from extracted material was of the same form as that from DNA in the cell, and had gone on to refine and modify the Watson-Crick structure to the point where the model and the X-ray data were in close agreement. In the two decades following the award of the Nobel prize he applied the techniques developed in the study of DNA to a variety of other biological structures including ribonucleic acids (RNAs) and chromosomes, and went on to promote research at the unit on membranes and neurobiology.

Although quiet, reserved, and shy, Wilkins was nevertheless unfailingly generous in supporting students and colleagues, and popular among the technical and ancillary staff at King's. In the unit 'he was referred to as "Uncle", accurately reflecting how his colleagues regarded him: too distant to be fraternal, not powerful enough to be paternal, essentially benevolent and without malice and occasionally a useful intermediary with the somewhat capricious Randall' (Arnott and others, 462). He had a long-standing interest in the arts-he had met his wife, Pat, at an Institute of Contemporary Arts meeting-and welcomed contact and correspondence with artists and musicians (including the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen) who were interested in helical structures; at one point the Leverhulme Trust funded an artist-in-residence at his unit at King's. He also retained his lifelong left-wing sympathies, though he had left the Communist Party when the Soviet Union entered Poland in September 1939. He was a member of the Russell committee against nuclear weapons, a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (and a frequent speaker at both national and branch meetings), and an active member of the Pugwash movement. In 1969, with Cecil Powell, he co-founded the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science, and served as its president from then until 1991. He was also president of Food and Disarmament International from 1984. Besides the Nobel prize he received many honours, including the Albert Lasker award of the American Public Health Association (also jointly with Crick and Watson) in 1960, and honorary degrees from Glasgow, Birmingham, and London universities, and Trinity College, Dublin (his father's alma mater). He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1959 and appointed CBE in 1963. He was making bookshelves at his home in Blackheath, London, when he suffered a cerebral haemorrhage. He died at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich, on 5 October 2004, and was survived by his wife, Pat, and their four children.

Robert Olby 

Sources  'Maurice Wilkins', biography, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1962/wilkins-bio.html, accessed on 22 Aug 2007 + J. D. Watson, The double helix: a personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA (1968) + R. C. Olby, The path to the double helix (1974); The path to the double helix: the discovery of DNA, rev. edn (1994) + S. Chomet, ed., DNA: genesis of a discovery (1994) + S. De Chadarevian, Designs for life: molecular biology after World War II (2002) + B. Maddox, Rosalind Franklin: the dark lady of DNA (2002) + M. Wilkins, The third man of the double helix: the autobiography of Maurice Wilkins (2003) + The Times (7 Oct 2004); (11 Oct 2004) + Daily Telegraph (7 Oct 2004) + The Guardian (7 Oct 2004); (23 Oct 2004) + Washington Post (7 Oct 2004) + The Independent (9 Oct 2004); (11 Oct 2004); (16 Oct 2004) + P. Wright, The Lancet, 364/9444 (2004), 1482 + S. Arnott, T. W. B. Kibble, and T. Shallice, 'Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins', Memoirs FRS, 52 (2006), 455-78 + 'DNA: the King's story', www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/iss/archives//dna/,  accessed on 22 Aug 2007 + WW (2004) + m. cert. [1959] + d. cert.
Archives  SOUND BL NSA, National Life Story Collection, leaders of national life, interviews with S. Rose, 23 Feb 1990, 16 Nov 1990, F1169-F1174 + BL NSA, documentary recording
Likenesses  G. Argent, bromide print, 1970, NPG [see illus.] · obituary photographs
Wealth at death  £821,381: probate, 1 June 2005, CGPLA Eng. & Wales




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