Maurice Wilkins

Maurice was born in the tiny town of Pongaroa, 200km northeast of New Zealand’s capital Wellington, in December 1916. At the age of six, his family relocated to the United Kingdom so that his father could further his studies in preventative medicine. Maurice went on to study physics, receiving a doctorate in 1940.

During the early years of World War II, Maurice focused his postgraduate research on enhancing the cathode-ray tube screens used in radar technology. He also worked on the separation of uranium isotopes to be used in bombs, and shortly after that moved from Birmingham to work on the Manhattan Project in Berkeley, California.

While there, Maurice helped to develop the world’s first atomic bomb. He later expressed disappointment with the military applications of nuclear physics, confessing he felt ‘very disgusted with the dropping of two bombs on civilian centres in Japan’. The experience led him to become involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons, with a life-long commitment to the peaceful use of science.

Maurice Wilkins is most well known for his post-war work. In 1946, he entered the emerging field of biophysics, an interdisciplinary science that applies the principles of physics to study biology. He became a member of the newly formed Medical Research Council Biophysics Research Unit at King’s College in London and set to work on understanding the genetic effects of ultrasound used for medical purposes.

After several years, Maurice turned his attention to the use of spectroscopic studies on nucleic acids, which ultimately led to the use of X-ray diffraction to explore the molecular structure of DNA. In 1950, Maurice and his graduate student Raymond Gosling were able to produce X-ray photographs that showed for the first time that the long, thin DNA molecule had a regular, crystalline form.

“The DNA was, so to speak, shouting at us ‘Look how regular I am!’,” said Maurice, reflecting on the discovery. “On the other hand, we knew genes had to be very complicated and therefore DNA had to be complicated. That paradox presented us with a very important challenge in our thinking about the structure and function of DNA.”

Experienced chemist Rosalind Franklin joined the lab at King’s College London and produced further X-ray photographs of DNA. Her images, along with Maurice’s, showed it to have a helical structure, and that structure occurred in the DNA of all species – including humans.

Maurice showed the X-ray photographs to James Watson, a scientist at the University of Cambridge who was also working on DNA with Maurice’s friend, Francis Crick. The images provided vital information that lay the foundations for Watson and Crick to complete their three-dimensional, double helix model for the structure of DNA.

In 1953, Watson and Crick published their proposed DNA double helix structure, acknowledging they had been “stimulated by the unpublished results and ideas” of Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin.

These breakthroughs revolutionised the understanding of the building blocks of life and set the stage for rapid advances in molecular biology. Maurice Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with his colleagues Watson and Crick in 1962 ‘for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material’.

During the official presentation speech, the importance of nucleic acids in determining the character of living matter was noted. It described nucleic acids as a staircase with different colour steps, the sequence of which conveys a message – both for constructing proteins within cells and for structuring new organisms through the biological process of inheritance.

The speech concluded with the thought that while the consequences of this new knowledge were yet to be seen, it seemed very likely to lead to new understandings of disease, the interaction of heredity and environment, and the origin of life.

With the structure of DNA finally solved, Maurice felt freer to look around and consider the wider role of science in human life and enjoy his life more broadly with his wife and family.

As predicted in his Nobel Prize presentation, Maurice’s achievements have left an indelible mark on scientific research and continue to shape the understanding of genetics and the fundamental nature of life itself. His work paved the way for huge breakthroughs, including the development of vaccines, screening of embryos for conditions such as spina bifida, DNA profiling of criminals, and advances in medical research on stem cells.

Maurice Wilkins died on 5 October 2004, in London. Despite never returning to New Zealand, he held an unwavering love for his place of birth, forever identifying as a proud New Zealander. Maurice credited his time living here, “living in paradise”, as the happiest time of his life. In recognition of his efforts, The Centre for Molecular Biodiscovery at the University of Auckland in New Zealand was renamed the Maurice Wilkins Centre in 2006.