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

A review of the life of Maurice Wilkins, who contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA.

James Dewey Watson and Francis Crick are two very important figures in the history of biology with their discovery of what DNA looks 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 undoubtedly contributed to the progress of mankind, but which also involved him in a controversy with the researcher Rosalind Franklin.

We will now read about the life of this researcher through a biography of Maurice Wilkins. a biography of Maurice WilkinsWe will see how his professional career developed and how the controversy about the structure of DNA came about.

Brief biography of Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins.

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

He is best known for having worked at King's College London, becoming involved in research into the structure of DNA, which also brought him into some controversy with one of the most prominent women 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 headmaster of the local high school and his maternal grandfather the chief of police.

When Maurice was 6 years old, he and his family moved to Birmingham, England, and from 1929 to 1934 he attended Wylde Green College. Following Wylde Green College, Wilkins attended King Edward's School, also in Birmingham.

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

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

World War II and postwar period

Throughout the Second World War, Wilkins developed and improved developed and improved radar screens in Birmingham, and later worked on isotope separation in the Manhattan Project at the University of California, Berkeley. at the University of California, Berkeley, during 1944 and 1945.

In the meantime, Randall had been awarded a Chair 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 physics research methodology to the field of biology. Surprising as it may seem from today's perspective, the fact is that in the 1940s combining these two disciplines was extremely novel and even unthinkable. Biophysics had scarcely made its presence felt in the scientific world and there was a certain reluctance to invest in it.

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

First phase of the DNA study

At King's College, Wilkins was engaged, among other things, in the diffraction of X-rays in ram sperm and in studying the findings made by Swiss scientist Rudolf Signer extracting DNA from calf thymus. Wilkins 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 graduate student Raymond Gosling obtained X-ray photographs of the DNA that showed a long DNA molecule. This X-ray diffraction work was carried out in May and June 1950. The photographs obtained were shown at a convention in Naples a year later, which aroused the interest of the biologist James Watson in DNA and, almost immediately, also Francis Crick.

Wilkins knew that experiments on purified DNA strands were going to require better X-ray equipment and, for that reason, he ordered a new X-ray tube and a new microcamera. He also He also suggested to Randall that he recommend to Rosalind Franklin, who was then doing research in Paris, that she devote herself to the study of DNA rather than proteins. instead of proteins.

Second phase of the study of DNA

In early 1951, Franklin finally arrived in the United Kingdom. Wilkins was on vacation and missed the initial meeting where Raymond Gosling represented him to Alex Stoles who, like Crick, would figure out the mathematical underpinnings that explained how helical structures diffract X-rays.

Not much research had been done 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 Ph.D. student, and she had the expectation that diffraction of DNA under X-rays would be her project. However, Wilkins returned to the lab expecting, for one thing, that Franklin would be his collaborator and that they would work together on the DNA project he had started.

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

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

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 kept them abreast of his results. This information from Wilkins, along with additional data from Franklin's research, stimulated Watson and Crick to create their first molecular model of DNA, a model with phosphate as the "backbone" of the molecule at the center.

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

In the spring of that 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 showed him a high quality image of the B-form of DNA under X-ray diffraction, now known as "photograph 51". showed him a high-quality image of the B-form of DNA under X-ray diffraction, today known as "photograph 51.". The photo was not his own work, but that of Rosalind Franklin, who had taken it in March 1952. Wilkins showed this photograph without notifying its author or requesting her authorization.

With the knowledge that Linus Pauling was also working on DNA and had proposed a model of DNA for publication, Watson and Crick went to even greater lengths to deduce what the structure of DNA was. Crick gained access to information 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 having been stimulated by the unpublished results of both Wilkins and Franklin.

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

Personal life.

Wilkins was married twice. His first wife, Ruth, was an art student he met while attending Berkeley. They eventually divorced and Ruth had Wilkins' son after the divorce. Maurice Wilkins later 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 problems in his youth, in the years leading up to World War II.in the years leading up to World War II. Wilkins was a pacifist 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 caused him to change his mind.

Because of his Communist views, Wilkins was on the list of potential suspects for revealing British intelligence atomic secrets to the USSR.. Documents confirming this were revealed to the public in August 2010, evidencing that there was a surveillance device that ended in 1953.

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

Controversy over the Nobel Prize

His competition in the discovery of the structure of DNA with Rosalind Franklin meant that, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962, he had to hear over and over again that the third man to be awarded the prize that year should have been a woman: Rosalind Franklin. the third man to be awarded the prize that year should have been a woman: Rosalind Franklin.. Although Rosalind died of Cancer in 1958, four years before the award was made 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 to respond to accusations that he and Watson and Crick had illicitly appropriated Franklin's findings. Such accusations had demonized the trio, but especially him, who defined himself as "the most prominent demon".

Acknowledgements

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

• 1959: Elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
• 1964: Elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization.
• 1960: Awarded the Albert Lasker Prize.
• 1962: Received the insignia of the Order of the British Empire.
• 1962: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with Watson and Crick.
• 1969-1991: President of the British Society for the Social Responsibility of Science.