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| New Zealand-born
British molecular biologist. In 1962 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology
or Medicine with Francis Crick and
James Watson for his work on the molecular
structure of nucleic acids, particularly DNA, using X-ray diffraction. Wilkins began his career as a physicist working on luminescence and phosphorescence, radar, and the separation of uranium isotopes, and worked in the USA during World War II on the development of the atomic bomb. After the war he turned his attention from nuclear physics to molecular biology, and studied the genetic effects of ultrasonic waves, nucleic acids, and viruses by using ultraviolet light. Wilkins was born in Pongaroa and studied in the UK at Cambridge. He became professor of biophysics at London 1970. Studying the X-ray diffraction pattern of DNA, he discovered that the molecule has a double helical structure and passed on his findings to Crick and Watson. |