哀悼另一位"DNA之父"Maurice Wilkins (1916 - 2004)

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Maurice Wilkins dies



Nobel Laureate who played a key role in the elucidation of the double helix was 88 | By Stephen Pincock and By Alison McCook

October 6, 2004

Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins, joint winner of the Nobel Prize in 1962 for his role in the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, died on Tuesday (October 5), Kings College London announced on Wednesday. King's, where Wilkins was still a member of staff, said the eminent researcher died in the hospital surrounded by his family.

Wilkins was born in 1916 and studied physics at St. John's College, Cambridge. During the Second World War, he worked on the separation of uranium isotopes, and then continued this work in Berkeley, Calif., where he joined the Manhattan Project.

As James Watson wrote in his 1968 book, The Double Helix, Wilkins was profoundly disillusioned when the bombs were dropped on Japan. "He considered forsaking science altogether to become a painter in Paris, but biology intervened," Watson wrote. When the war ended, Wilkins became lecturer in physics at St. Andrews University, and then moved to the Medical Research Council Biophysics Unit at King's College London.

Wilkins became assistant director of the Medical Research Council Unit in 1950 and deputy director in 1955. In crucial studies, his group obtained x-ray diffraction images of the structure of DNA that were of unprecedented clarity. It was for this work, and the years his group spent verifying the hypothetical model which Watson and Crick constructed, that he was awarded the Nobel.

Ray Gosling, professor emeritus at the University of London, met Wilkins in 1949 when he joined the Biophysics Unit, headed by Sir J.T. Randall. He recalled that he and Wilkins shared the equivalent of a "eureka moment" after studying a mass of DNA.

The researchers found that if they added water to the asbestos-like substance, it turned into a gel, out of which they could pull fibers. Gosling wound 35 DNA fibers around a paperclip and, late one evening, brought the specimen to the chemistry department and took an x-ray. "Up came all these wonderful spots," he recalled, demonstrating that the DNA had crystallized.

Wilkins "went around for days telling anyone that would listen that he had realized genes could crystallize," Gosling said. The year after, Wilkins described in a lecture the crystallization of DNA. A young James Watson was sitting in the audience, and the rest was history.

Gosling noted that when Watson and Crick built the model of the double helix, they offered a co-authorship to Wilkins, who declined, because he had not helped build the actual model. However, the title of Wilkins' autobiography, The Third Man of the Double Helix, says it all, Gosling told The Scientist. "Wilkins has ended up being very much the third man."

Indeed, Michael Levitt of Stanford University, who met Wilkins in the 1960s when he was a biophysics student at King's College, said he believed that the work of Watson and Crick might not have been possible without Wilkins' critical contributions. "It was the major discovery of the 20th century, and Wilkins was part of it," Levitt told The Scientist.

Gosling said that, outside of his work on DNA, Wilkins, like other researchers, had initially been very excited about the atomic bomb, but later "pulled back" when he realized its horrible consequences.

Consequently, Wilkins subsequently became very involved in trying to make science more responsible, Gosling said. He was president of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science, and in the 1970s he established an undergraduate course on the social impact of the biosciences. "He was one of the few Nobel Laureates who was leading people's thoughts that way," Gosling said.



Links for this article
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962
http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1962/index.html

"Maurice Wilkins: Obituary," King's College London news release, October 6, 2004.
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/phpnews/wmview.php?ArtID=688

Ray Gosling
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/dna/speakers/gosling.html



©2004, The Scientist Inc. in association with BioMed Central.

[ Last edited by yaoxin on 10-10-2004 at 03:02 AM ]

yaoxin

發現DNA雙螺旋結構先驅　諾貝爾得主威金斯過世
2004/10/07 17:01



記者管淑平／編譯

發現生物去氧核醣核酸（DNA）雙螺旋結構的英國科學家威金斯（Maurice Wilkins）5日晚間在英國倫敦的醫院去世，享壽88歲。

威金斯在1962年與另外兩名科學家英國的法蘭西斯‧克里克（Francis Crick）、美國的詹姆斯‧華森（James Watson）因為發現DNA的雙螺旋結構而獲得諾貝爾醫學獎。倫敦國王學院6日宣佈他的過世的消息時，形容他是20世紀最偉大的科學家之一，地位崇高。華森是三人中至今仍在世的，他6日讚揚威金斯，「是個非常聰明的科學家，有很深切的人道關懷，認為科學研究必須造福社會。」

威金斯1950年在倫敦國王學院做研究時，和同僚法蘭克林（Rosalind Franklin）利用當時才剛問世的X光照射技術觀測到DNA的結構，英國皇家科學院主席梅伊勳爵表示，「華森和克里克利用這項發現，向外界展示了生物基礎DNA的交纏雙螺旋結構型式。」他說，「華森和克里克在全世界響譽盛名，但是威金斯和法蘭克林扮演的關鍵角色，卻沒有被科學界以外的人充分了解。」

國王學院生物醫學講師敏格說，這名科學家以其發現有助科學發生革命性進展，並未得到應有的肯定，「他是分子生物學的先驅，沒有他，我們無法達到今日的地步。」

威金斯1916年生於紐西蘭，6歲舉家搬到英國，1938年於劍橋大學取得物理學位，研究磷酸鈣取得博士學位﹔二次大戰期間曾經到美國居住一段時間，1945年回到英國，先後在聖安德魯斯大學和國王學院教授物理。

他曾參與二次大戰期間美國的原子彈研發計劃「曼哈頓計劃」，後來投入裁減核武運動，並為此感到驕傲。






[ Last edited by yaoxin on 10-10-2004 at 03:06 AM ]

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