Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins (1916-2004)

Awarded the Prize “for the discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids its significance for information transfer in living material.”

British biophysicist. Wilkins was born at Pongaroa, New Zealand on December 15, 1916. He took his degree in physics at St. John’s College, Cambridge, in 1938. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1940 at Birmingham University, later he moved to the Manhattan Project in Berkeley, California. He worked at St. Andrews’ University and Medical Research Council Biophysics Research Unit in King’s College, London, where he became Deputy Director in 1955. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society in London. Wilkins died on October 5, 2004, in London, England.