Maurice Wilkins (1916–2004) to Whom (Behind Wilkins’S Back) Randall Had Promised Sole Charge of the DNA the Death on 5 October of Maurice Problem

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Obituary the structure of DNA was rudely disturbed by the arrival at King’s of Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins (1916–2004) to whom (behind Wilkins’s back) Randall had promised sole charge of the DNA The death on 5 October of Maurice problem. The disastrous consequences have Wilkins, following so soon on that of been often related; the ensuing controversy Francis Crick, inevitably invites reflections caused Wilkins lasting pain, and most of all on the differences in character between the jibe that he was against women. these two close friends — who, with James The immediate upshot, at all events, Watson, shared the Nobel prize for the was that he was cruelly elbowed out of his discovery that changed the face of biology, cherished project. He had surrendered and indeed of medicine. The contrast in Signer’s DNA to Franklin and she made

personality could scarcely have been good use of it. It was her superior B-form TIME LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES greater. It was encapsulated by the diffraction patterns that proved especially television interviews that followed the useful to Watson and Crick. Wilkins was announcement of the award in 1962. too intimidated by Franklin’s formidable Crick, ebulliently expansive, threw off persona to begin model-building as he aphorisms. Wilkins, his coat collar turned had planned, and by the time she left up, eyed his interlocutor morosely. Invited King’s it was too late: Crick and Watson to share the euphoria of the quest after had shot his fox. scientific truth, he gave a characteristic We know now that Crick set out the response: “Oh, it’s all just fiddle, fiddle, From DNA to the social reasons why Wilkins merited a share in the fiddle.”Wilkins was never given to Nobel prize: Wilkins had initiated and hyperbole. responsibility of science almost single-handedly carried the DNA In his research, Wilkins was neither a problem. He had “done numerous visionary nor a deep thinker like Crick. appointed professor of physics at the extensive, accurate and painstaking Rather, he was a meticulous, inventive and University of St Andrews in Scotland, where studies”.True, he had “worked rather infinitely patient experimentalist. He loved Wilkins joined him. Thence they moved to slowly, but then hardly anybody else ha[d] instruments, and had an especial rapport King’s College in London, where Randall done anything”.It was he who had with the workshop machinists. He adhered first showed his remarkable — and, to the recognized that the structure must be to the old string-and-sealing-wax tradition staid mandarins of the college, alarming — helical. Moreover, compelling as the DNA of experimental physics. He would capacity for gathering funds and enlarging model appeared, it was still only a model; prod about in dustbins for useful bits of his department. He persuaded the Medical Watson in particular feared that metal, and visitors to the laboratory were Research Council to establish a biophysics it might after all be no more than a sometimes startled to see a condom put unit with Wilkins as deputy director. mirage. Wilkins and his colleagues at King’s to use as a gas box surrounding an X-ray Some three years earlier, Oswald Avery spent the next years gathering experimental camera. Wilkins had an almost tactile and his colleagues had demonstrated that evidence that the structure was indeed appreciation of interference and diffraction DNA was the genetic material, but their essentially correct and refining its details. phenomena, and a pictorial perception of work was largely ignored and, by many, After DNA, Wilkins began to think molecular structure. He liked models and disbelieved. But Wilkins thought otherwise about neurobiology. There were notable mistrusted mathematical abstraction. His and resolved to study its structure. After a publications on the structure of cell approach to structure, in the words of one period of skirmishing, using ultraviolet membranes, but gradually extramural collaborator, was “incredibly shrewd”. microscopy, with the disposition of DNA interests supervened. Troubled by the Maurice Wilkins was born in New in cells, he began his studies on X-ray misuse of science, Wilkins became the first Zealand into an Anglo-Irish family of diffraction. He designed cameras and president of the British Society for Social progressive Unitarian views. The family devices for pulling DNA fibres, and Responsibility in Science, and an active returned to England when he was six. He was fortunate in procuring some high- member of the Pugwash disarmament showed an early interest in microscopes molecular-weight material from Rudolf group. He organized an undergraduate and telescopes, and a precocious aptitude Signer in Berne. By 1950 he had obtained course on the social aspects of science, for building instruments. He graduated in diffraction pictures of unprecedented which was hugely popular with the physics from the University of Cambridge quality of what we now know as the A-form students and still thrives. He sat in on the and then from Birmingham, where his of DNA. These he showed at a meeting in course, a benevolent presence in the PhD supervisor was the young John Naples. In the audience was the young Jim background, until a few months ago. Randall. Thus began a close but never Watson, who later wrote that Wilkins’s Amidst the furore about DNA, the entirely congenial relationship. presentation “stood out like a beacon”,for merits of the participants and the Wilkins’s research was interrupted it implied that the greatest prize — the apotheosis of Rosalind Franklin, Wilkins by the Second World War, when the structure of the gene — could be explicitly kept his peace until, only last year, he department switched to radar research. determined. When Watson asked to join published his memoir, The Third Man of Randall and his colleague Harry Boot Wilkins’s research group he received no the Double Helix. It bears the stamp of the developed the cavity magnetron, the encouragement. But from then on Watson’s modesty and restraint that pervaded his all-important source of centimetric radar course was clear, and quickly took him whole career. Walter Gratzer waves, while Wilkins was dispatched to to Cambridge and his assignation with Walter Gratzer is at The Randall Division, E. O. Lawrence’s cyclotron laboratory in Francis Crick, so vividly described in King’s College, New Hunt’s House, Guy’s Campus, California to help fractionate uranium. The Double Helix. St Thomas’ Street, London SE1 1UL, UK. When the war ended, Randall was Wilkins’s laborious progress towards e-mail: [email protected]