Maurice Wilkins

Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004) was a New Zealand-born British biophysicist known for his work on the molecular structure of DNA. He initiated and directed X-ray diffraction studies of DNA at King's College London, beginning investigations of nucleic acids in 1948 and producing some of the earliest high-quality X-ray diffraction images by 1950. His presentation of this work at a 1951 conference in Naples influenced James Watson to pursue DNA structure research, and after Rosalind Franklin joined the project he played a central role in sharing critical data, including the image known as Photo 51, which Watson and Crick used to build their double helix model in March 1953. Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Watson and Crick for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.