BIOLOGY
DNA
Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins
Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins, was born in Pongara, North Wairarapa, New Zealand on the 15th December, 1916 and died of cancer on the 6th October, 2004. Born of Irish parents, his father Edgar Henry was a medical doctor in the school service and his mother Eveline Whittacker, related to Joseph Priestley and George Stephenson, was a school teacher, who later moved to Birmingham, England when Maurice was six years old. When he was eleven he went to King Edwards school and later read physics at St. John’s college, Cambridge in 1938. He then moved to Birmingham university to become research asstistant to Dr J T Randall where they studied the luminescence of solids. He took his Ph.D in physics in 1940 focusing on thermal stability of trapped electrons in phosphors, and on the theory of phosphorescence. During the war he applied these ideas to problems with improvement of cathode-ray tube screens for radar. Next he worked under Professor M L E Oliphant on mass spectrograph separation of uranium isotopes for use in bombs before moving to Berkley, California to work on the Manhattan Project. In 1945 he returned to work on Biophysics with Professor Randall at St Andrew’s university, Scotland. In 1946 they moved to the newly formed Medical Research Council Biophysics Research Unit at Kings college, London where he become Assistant Director in 1950 and Deputy Director in 1955. Wilkins lived in London with his second wife Patricia Ann Chidgey, a teacher, who he married in 12th March, 1959 and they had four children, Sarah, George, Emily and William; he was first married to Ruth an art student at Berkley, California and they were divorced a few months before the birth of their son. © BA
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