DNA pioneer dead at 88

LONDON – Maurice Wilkins, who won a Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on DNA but remained forever in the shadows of his peers, died last week Tuesday, aged 88.

Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1962 for using X-ray crystallography to first help discover, then to verify, the double-helix nature of DNA. But he remained largely an unsung hero in the annals of popular science behind James Watson and Francis Crick, who won the Nobel Prize along with him and are regularly credited with the discovery of the double helix.Crick died on July 28 this year.Praise poured in from the scientific world for Wilkins as one of the century’s most influential researchers whose humility kept him from the global spotlight.”Maurice Wilkins played an absolutely critical role in one of the most important discoveries in human history — the elucidation of the structure of DNA, the primary blue-print for life, said Adrian Hayday, a King’s College professor of immunobiology.”The success of Watson and Crick …in elucidating the DNA structure is universally known and acknowledged.But its complete dependence on the experimental results obtained, first by Wilkins, and then, most critically, by Franklin, is still commonly overlooked,” he said.Matt Ridley, author of Genome and Nature Vs Nurture hailed Wilkins said “his generosity and extreme modesty allowed others to share the (Nobel) prize”.”It was he who first obtained an X-ray image of DNA, he who taught Francis Crick about DNA, his photograph that inspired James Watson, and his suggestion that led to the recruitment of Rosalind Franklin to King’s College.”But later, it was he who finally proved the double helix correct,” said Ridley.Wilkins was born in New Zealand on December 15 1916, then moved to Britain where he was educated at Cambridge and Birmingham Universities.His career was launched during World War II with work in California on the top-secret Manhattan Project, the US effort to make an atomic bomb.There he continued his doctoral studies on mass spectrograph separation of uranium isotopes for use in bombs.After the war he went to Scotland’s St.Andrews University, then moved to King’s College London in 1963, where he remained for decades, carrying out the pivotal work producing new images of the A form of the DNA molecule.King’s College said Wilkins died in the hospital, surrounded by his family.The university principal, Rick Trainor, hailed the scientist as a “towering figure” of science and “a man of immense humanity”.- Nampa-AFPBut he remained largely an unsung hero in the annals of popular science behind James Watson and Francis Crick, who won the Nobel Prize along with him and are regularly credited with the discovery of the double helix.Crick died on July 28 this year.Praise poured in from the scientific world for Wilkins as one of the century’s most influential researchers whose humility kept him from the global spotlight.”Maurice Wilkins played an absolutely critical role in one of the most important discoveries in human history — the elucidation of the structure of DNA, the primary blue-print for life, said Adrian Hayday, a King’s College professor of immunobiology.”The success of Watson and Crick …in elucidating the DNA structure is universally known and acknowledged.But its complete dependence on the experimental results obtained, first by Wilkins, and then, most critically, by Franklin, is still commonly overlooked,” he said.Matt Ridley, author of Genome and Nature Vs Nurture hailed Wilkins said “his generosity and extreme modesty allowed others to share the (Nobel) prize”.”It was he who first obtained an X-ray image of DNA, he who taught Francis Crick about DNA, his photograph that inspired James Watson, and his suggestion that led to the recruitment of Rosalind Franklin to King’s College.”But later, it was he who finally proved the double helix correct,” said Ridley.Wilkins was born in New Zealand on December 15 1916, then moved to Britain where he was educated at Cambridge and Birmingham Universities.His career was launched during World War II with work in California on the top-secret Manhattan Project, the US effort to make an atomic bomb.There he continued his doctoral studies on mass spectrograph separation of uranium isotopes for use in bombs.After the war he went to Scotland’s St.Andrews University, then moved to King’s College London in 1963, where he remained for decades, carrying out the pivotal work producing new images of the A form of the DNA molecule.King’s College said Wilkins died in the hospital, surrounded by his family.The university principal, Rick Trainor, hailed the scientist as a “towering figure” of science and “a man of immense humanity”.- Nampa-AFP