Science
Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins
Biophysicist and DNA diffraction researcher
Also known as Maurice Wilkins
Photograph · Image credit
Who they are
Maurice Wilkins contributed X-ray research to the work establishing DNA’s structure. With Alec Stokes and Herbert Wilson, he coauthored one of the experimental papers published alongside the Watson–Crick model in April 1953. His profile preserves that paper’s authorship separately from the model paper and from Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling’s accompanying work.
He appears in the shared experimental and theoretical history of DNA’s double helix.
Selected contributions
- Coauthored the accompanying DNA diffraction paper with Alec Stokes and Herbert Wilson.Source ↗
Selected works
Academic paper · 1953
Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids
Wilkins, Stokes and Wilson present preliminary X-ray evidence for helical nucleic-acid chains and discuss agreement with the Watson–Crick model. Their experimental paper acknowledges remaining ambiguity and the contributions of Franklin and Gosling.
One of three related Nature papers published April 25, 1953; separate from the Watson–Crick and Franklin–Gosling papers.
Bibliographic details ↗Publisher details ↗Full text ↗
Reading scope & citation
Freshly read bibliographic record: author list, publication date, pages and DOI. No abstract is supplied; the full article was not freshly inspected. Fresh indexed publisher metadata plus reused inspected King’s account of the three-paper sequence; full paper not freshly read. Opening, interpretation conclusion, acknowledgments, author signatures and issue date read; full mathematical analysis not audited.
DOI: 10.1038/171738a0
In the timeline
Documented connections
Documented · co authored with
Maurice Wilkins and Alec Stokes co-authored an accompanying experimental DNA paper with Herbert Wilson.
This pair represents a three-author paper; Wilson must remain credited. The original experimental paper was not inspected in full.
Read the relationship record →Biography sources & portrait credit
- King’s and DNA ↗King’s College London
- Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids ↗Nature 171, 738–740; scan hosted by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Portrait credit
U.S. National Institutes of Health (photographer uncredited). Public domain (U.S. federal government work). Via Wikimedia Commons.
Photograph. Cropped to 4:5, resized to 320 × 400 and converted to WebP.
Image source & identification ↗ · Public domain (U.S. federal government work) ↗
