Maurice Wilkins: biography and contributions of this Nobel-winning biophysicist

James Dewey Watson and Francis Crick are two very important characters in the history of biology with their discovery of what DNA is like. Thanks to their discoveries, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962, but they were joined by a third name: Maurice Wilkins.

Wilkins contributed to the discovery of what DNA was like, something that has undoubtedly contributed to the progress of humanity but that, also, made him get involved in a controversy with the researcher Rosalind Franklin.

Next we are going to read about the life of this researcher through a biography of Maurice Wilkins, seeing how his professional career developed and how the controversy over the structure of DNA took place.

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Brief Biography of Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins

Maurice Wilkins was a British biophysicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research in the areas of physics and biophysics., contributing to a better scientific understanding of aspects such as phosphorescence, isotope separation, optical microscopy and X-ray diffraction and the development of the radar.

He is best known for having worked at King's College London getting involved in researching the structure of DNA, lo which also brought him some controversy with one of the most remarkable female researchers of the last century, Rosalind Franklin.

Early years and education

Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins was born on December 15, 1916 in Pongaroa, New Zealand, into a family of Irish origin. His father was Edgar Henry Wilkins, a physician. His family came from Dublin, where his paternal grandfather had been the director of the local Institute and his maternal grandfather had been the chief of police.

By the time Maurice was 6 years old, his and his family moved to Birmingham, England, and from 1929 to 1934 he attended Wylde Green College. After passing through this educational institution, Wilkins studied at King Edward's School, also in Birmingham.

Young Maurice attended St John's College, Cambridge in 1935, later to specialize in physics. He would also receive a Bachelor of Arts in 1938. Mark Oliphan, who was one of Wilkins' professors at St. John, had been appointed to the Chair of Physics at the University of Birmingham, and he had named John Randall as one of his companions. Randall would end up being Wilkins' tutor for his doctoral thesis.

In 1945, Randall and Wilkins published four articles for the Proceedings of the Royal Society on phosphorescence and electrons. Wilkins received his doctorate for his work in 1940.

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World War II and postwar

Throughout WWII Wilkins developed and improved radar screens in Birmingham, and subsequently worked on isotope separation at the Manhattan Project at the University of California, Berkeley, during the years 1944 and 1945.

Meanwhile, Randall had been awarded a Professorship in Physics at the University of St. Andrews. In 1945, he asked Wilkins to come to this university to work as an assistant lecturer.

Randall was negotiating with the British Medical Research Council (MRC) to open a laboratory in which to apply his own research methodology in physics to the field of biology. As surprising as it may seem from a current perspective, the truth is that in the 1940s, combining these two disciplines was extremely new and even unthinkable. Biophysics had barely made its mark in the scientific world and there was some reluctance to invest in it.

The MRC told Randall that to open such a laboratory it was necessary to do it at another university. In 1946 Randall was appointed professor of physics in charge of the physics department at King’s College, with the enough funding to open a Biophysics Unit, where he made Maurice Wilkins his director assistant. So that managed to create a team of scientists specialized in both physics and biological sciences. His philosophy was to explore the use of as many techniques as possible in parallel, see which ones were the most promising, and focus on them.

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First phase of DNA study

At King’s College, Wilkins devoted himself, among other things, to X-ray diffraction in the sperm of rams. and in the study of the findings made by the Swiss scientist Rudolf Signer extracting DNA from the thymus of the veal. Wilkins she discovered that it was possible to produce thin strands from a concentrated DNA solution containing highly ordered DNA arrays.

Using selected bundles of these DNA strands and keeping them hydrated, Wilkins and his student from graduate Raymond Gosling obtained X-ray photographs of DNA that showed a long molecule of this substance. These X-ray diffraction works were carried out in May and June 1950. The photographs obtained were shown at a convention in Naples a year later, which they piqued the interest of biologist James Watson in DNA and, almost immediately, also of Francis Crick.

Wilkins knew that experiments on the purified DNA strands were going to require better X-ray equipment, and for that reason he commissioned a new X-ray tube and a new microcamera. Too suggested to Randall that he recommend Rosalind Franklin, who was researching in Paris at the time, to study DNA instead of protein.

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Second phase of the DNA study

In early 1951, Franklin finally arrived in the UK. Wilkins was on vacation and missed the initial meeting where Raymond Gosling represented him against Alex Stoles who, like Crick, would find out the mathematical foundations that explained how helical structures diffracted X-rays.

He hadn't done much research on DNA in recent months, and the new X-ray tube was not being used, waiting for Franklin to get his hands on it. Franklin ended up studying DNA, Gosling became her PhD student, and she had an expectation that DNA diffraction under X-rays was hers project.. However, Wilkins returned to the lab expecting, on the one hand, that Franklin would be his collaborator and that they would work together on the DNA project he had started.

The confusion about what the roles of Franklin and Wilkins were in relation to this project, which would later stir up tensions between the two researchers, is attributable to Randall. Randall sent a letter stating to Rosalind Franklin that she and Gosling were to be solely in charge of the study of the DNA, but did not advise Wilkins of his decision and Maurice learned of the contents of the letter years after the death of Franklin.

The tension was due to Randall making Rosalind believe that Wilkins and Stokes wanted to stop working on the DNA project and that from then on it was Rosalind's job. As Wilkins continued to study DNA, Franklin interpreted it as an intrusion into his new field of study., further aggravating the conflict.

In November 1951, Wilkins obtained evidence that DNA in cells and purified DNA show a helical structure. Maurice Wilkins met with Watson and Crick and updated them on his results. This information from Wilkins, along with additional data from Franklin's research, encouraged Watson and Crick to create his first molecular model of DNA, a model with phosphate as the "backbone" of the molecule in the center.

In early 1952 Wilkins began a series of experiments with cuttlefish sperm. In that same time, Franklin resigned from participating in the DNA molecular modeling efforts and continued his work of detailed analysis of his data obtained by X-ray diffraction..

In the spring of the same year, Franklin obtained permission from Randall to transfer his Collaborative Fellowship from King’s College to John Bernal’s laboratory at Birbeck College, also in London. Franklin would remain at King’s College until mid-March 1953.

In early 1953, Watson visited King’s College where Wilkins he showed her a high-quality image of form B DNA under X-ray diffraction, today known as "Picture 51". The photo was not his work, but that of Rosalind Franklin, who had taken it in March 1952. Wilkins showed this photograph without notifying the author or requesting permission.

With the knowledge that Linus Pauling was working on DNA as well and that he had proposed a model of the DNA for publication, Watson and Crick went to even greater lengths to deduce what the structure of DNA. Crick gained access to information from Franklin obtained regarding DNA. With this information, Watson and Crick published their proposal for DNA with a double helical structure in an article in the journal Nature in April 1953., in which they acknowledged being stimulated by the unpublished results of both Wilkins and Franklin.

Following the 1953 papers on the double helix structure, Wilkins continued to research for establish the helical model as valid throughout different biological species, as well as in living systems. He became deputy director of the MRC of King's College Biophysics Unit in 1955, succeeding Randall as unit director from 1970 to 1972.

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Personal life

Wilkins was married twice. His first wife, Ruth, was an art student he met when he was going to Berkeley. They eventually divorced and Ruth had a son from Wilkins after the divorce. Subsequently, Maurice Wilkins married his second wife, Patricia Ann Chidgey in 1959. With her he had four children: Sarah, George, Emily and William.

Maurice Wilkins' political views brought him some trouble in his youth, in the years before World War II. Wilkins was a peace activist, and in fact joined the British Anti-War Scientists Group. He was also a member of the Communist Party, although the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland in September 1939 changed his mind.

Due to his communist ideas, Wilkins was on the list of potential suspects for revealing British intelligence atomic secrets to the USSR. The documents confirming this were revealed to the public in August 2010, evidencing that there was a surveillance device that ended in 1953.

He passed away on October 5, 2004, in London, England, at the age of 87.

Controversy over the Nobel Prize

His competition in the discovery of what the structure of DNA was like with Rosalind Franklin meant that when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962, he had to hear over and over again what the third man to be awarded that award that year should have been a woman: Rosalind Franklin. Although Rosalind herself passed away from cancer in 1958, four years before the award was given to her colleagues, it must also be said that she was never nominated.

Maurice Wilkins published his autobiography in 2003, entitled "The Third Man of the Double Helix," a title that was chosen by the publisher, not by him. In the introduction to his book, Wilkins wanted to make it clear that the main motivation for writing it was precisely respond to allegations that both he and Watson and Crick had misappropriated the findings of Franklin. Such accusations had demonized the trio, but especially him, who defined himself as “the most prominent demon”.

Acknowledgments

As a reward for his long career in the study of DNA and being, practically, one of the co-founders of biophysics, Maurice Wilkins received numerous awards throughout his life:

• 1959: He is elected as a Member of the Royal Society.
• 1964: Elected member of the European Organization for Molecular Biology.
• 1960: Receives the Albert Lasker Award.
• 1962: Receives the insignia of the Order of the British Empire.
• 1962: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Watson and Crick.
• 1969-1991: President of the British Society for the Social Responsibility of Science.