‘DNA, you know, is Midas’ gold.Everybody who touches it goes mad.’

The words used by Maurice Wilkins,joint winner of the Nobel Prize in 1962for his role in the elucidation of thestructure of DNA, capture some of thestrong emotions felt by those closest towhat was perhaps the defining momentin contemporary biology – the solutionof the double-helical structure of DNA.The success of Watson and Crickthrough model building is widely knownbut this accomplishment inevitablyovershadows the key contributionsmade by Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin,the capable research student Wilkinshired. The contribution of Wilkins was todemonstrate how X-ray diffraction, atechnique commonly used to determinethe structure of inorganic molecules,could be used to solve the structure ofDNA. Without this step, the structure of

DNA would not have been asimmediately forthcoming.

What is life?Wilkins was born in 1916 in Pongaroa,New Zealand, a small town situated inthe south of the North Island. Hisparents came from Ireland and hisfather was a doctor in the schoolmedical service. When Wilkins was six,the family moved to England. He wenton to study physics at St John’s College,Cambridge (UK), and as a researchassistant to John Randall at theUniversity of Birmingham (UK)investigated the luminescence of solids.After completing his PhD thesis in 1940on the theory of phosphorescence andthe stability of trapped electrons inphosphors, Wilkins went on to studythe separation of uranium isotopes. Thisundertaking was to continue at theUniversity of California, Berkeley (USA),

where he joined the Manhattan atombomb project. His work on this project,and the eventual dropping of thebombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in1945, left an indelible mark on Wilkins’life and career, leading him to questionthe moral implications of scientificresearch that could produce suchdevastating destruction.

Like many scientists of his generation,Wilkins’ career path was to betransformed by reading Schrödinger’shighly influential book entitled What isLife? [1]. Although the originality of thisbook has sometimes been questioned,it undeniably captured, in an accessiblestyle, the way in which physicalmethods could have a major impact onbiological problems. Like many seminalworks, What is Life? came along at theright time and opened up exciting newresearch possibilities at the interface oftwo scientific disciplines: physics and

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Maurice Wilkins: the third man of the double helix

breath and read the paper carefully. Askyourself why was your paper cited? Wasit for the sorts of reasons that you foundfor yourself? Would it have made anymaterial difference to the publication athand if the author had failed to cite yourpaper? Be brutally honest with yourself.Remember that you do not have topublish the results or even tell anybodyabout them.

These experiments should help youdecide for yourself the meaning of it all.

References1 Rowe, R.C. (2004) Publish or perish. Drug

Discov. Today 9, 590–5912 Porter, J.R. (1964) The Scientific Journal –

300th Anniversary. Bacteriol. Rev. 28, 211–2303 Rangachari, P.K. (1994) The Word is the

Deed: The ideology of the research paper inexperimental science. Am. J. Physiol (Adv.Physiol. Educ.) 12, S120–S136

4 Hall, A.R. and Hall, M. (1965) TheCorrespondence of Henry Oldenburg. TheUniversity of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI, USA

5 Shapin, S. (1994) A Social History of Truth:Civility and Science in Seventeenth CenturyEngland. p xxii, Chicago Press, Chicago, IL,USA

6 Godlee, F. and Jefferson, T. (2003) Peer Reviewin the Health Sciences. (2nd edn), BMJ Books,London, UK

7 Garfield, E. (1970) Citation indexing forstudying science. Nature 227, 669–671

8 MacRoberts, M.H. and MacRoberts, B.R.(1989) Citation Analysis and the science

policy arena. Trends Biochem. Sci. 14, 89 Cole, S. (1989) Citations and the evaluation

of individual scientists. Trends Biochem. Sci.14, 9–13

10 Siekevitz, P. (1991) Citations and the tenor ofthe times. FASEB J. 5, 139

11 Moravcsik, M.J. and Murugesan, P. (1975)Some results on the function and quality ofcitations. Soc. Studies Sci. 5, 86–92

12 Dumont, J.E. (1989) From bad to worse:evaluation by journal impact. Trends Biochem.Sci. 14, 327–328

P.K.RangachariProfessor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics

Director of Inquiry, B.HSc ProgramFaculty of Medicine

University of CalgaryCalgary, Canada

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biology. For Wilkins, it started a journeyalong the path to unravelling thecomplexity of living processes.

Harvesting dataIn 1950, after being a lecturer inPhysics at St Andrews University (UK),Wilkins followed Randall to King’sCollege, London (UK), where heeventually became Assistant Director ofthe Medical Research CouncilBiophysics Unit and, in 1955, itsDeputy Director. In his early days atKing’s, Wilkins had the freedom toswitch from trying (unsuccessfully) tocause mutations in fruit flies withultrasonic radiation to ‘mucking aboutwith tobacco-mosaic virus’, a referenceto structural work on this popularstudy organism.

Eventually, Wilkins arrived atstudying DNA using X-ray diffractiontechniques. DNA purificationtechniques had been greatly improvedby the Swiss scientist Rudolf Signer.The breakthrough came with the useof calf thymus cells as the source ofDNA, which could be extracted aslong fragile threads suitable forstructural examination. Working withRay Gosling, who is currently ProfessorEmeritus at the University of London,Wilkins found that the addition ofwater to DNA obtained using thismethod enabled the production of agel from which fibres could beextracted. Gosling wound 35 suchfibres around a paperclip, examinedthem by X-ray diffraction and obtained‘…these wonderful spots’, whichdemonstrated that DNA had beencrystallized. Amazingly, the work wasnot immediately pursued because of alack of instrumentation in thelaboratory.

Once a new X-ray tube with a beam of sufficient intensity becameavailable, the project had become theresponsibility of Wilkins’ new researchassistant, Rosalind Franklin. Theintricacies of the relationship thatdeveloped between Wilkins and Franklinhave been well-documented. ThroughWilkins, the information that DNA wasa ‘monoclinic, face-centred unit cell’eventually reached the fertile mind ofFrancis Harry Crompton Crick. The restis history and the double-helical structureof DNA soon followed in 1953.

Public opinion, social responsibility Wilkins was a polite, intensely privateand self-effacing man. He had a strongdislike of pompous ideas or actions andwas particularly proud of hisinvolvement in the Campaign forNuclear Disarmament. For 22 years,Wilkins was president of the BritishSociety for Social Responsibility inScience. He was also an activeundergraduate lecturer on the socialimpact of the biological sciences. Theseactivities grew out of his lifetimeexperiences and the strength ofconviction he felt towards the need forscientific undertakings to reflect socialresponsibility. He will be rememberedfor having taken part in perhaps thegreatest biomedical discovery of the20th century.

Maurice Wilkins died on 5th October2004. He was 87.

References1 Schrödinger, E. (1944) What is Life?,

Cambridge University Press

Barry WhyteConsultant, Rochat & Partners

Rue Du-Roveray 12Geneva, Switzerland

e-mail: barry@rochat-pr.ch

‘Wilkins was a polite, intenselyprivate and self-effacing man.’

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