Wilkins, Maurice Hugh Frederick (1916-2004), was a British biophysicist. He shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with biologists James D. Watson of the United States and Francis H. C. Crick of the United Kingdom. Wilkins performed X-ray studies on deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the substance that transmits genetic information from one generation to the next. This work led Watson and Crick to create a model of the molecular structure of DNA.
Wilkins worked on the World War II Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb. He turned to biophysics research after the war. Working at King’s College in London, Wilkins became an authority on the structure of nucleic acids.
Wilkins was born on Dec. 15, 1916, in Pongaroa, New Zealand. He died on Oct. 5, 2004.
