THE THIRD MAN OF THE DOUBLE HELIX

This is an avowedly self-justifying autobiography in which Maurice Wilkins tries to put the record straight about the part he played in the discovery of the structure of DNA. He resents the title "The Third Man" which his publishers foisted on him, and is hurt by the way feminist writers have demonised his role in the way credit was given, or not given, to the crucial work of Rosalind Franklin. What he has to say therefore gives an important, and slightly different, perspective to one of the crucial discoveries made by 20th century science. However, this book is more than that. Wilkins made his way from an ordinary background to membership of the scientific elite and a Nobel Prize. His life story is a document of social history which in many ways characterises the attitudes of the English intellectual middle class in the 20th century. Above all, as Wilkins points out, the story of DNA raises fundamental questions about what scientific discovery really is, and how scientific research should be conducted. Wilkins' father emigrated to New Zealand where he had an idyllic childhood, and then returned to England. He won scholarships first to the King Edward's School in Birmingham, and then on to Cambridge. Even though his father was a doctor, these awards were vital. In those days university education was either for the wealthy, or for the talented who won scholarships. His potential a researcher was recognised by his first supervisor, Oliphant, but the 1930s were times of heady left-wing idealism; Wilkins became an anti-war campaigner and a Communist and mixed in the left-wing intellectual circles that included J.D. Bernal. As a result, he only obtained a lower 2nd degree. Research in Cambridge was therefore closed to him, but Oliphant had now moved to Birmingham and accepted him as a research student. Even as an anti-war campaigner Wilkins had done research on poison gas and incendiary bombs to discover how to protect civilians in any future war. Now the 2nd World War had come, he forsook his Pacifism and Communism and worked on improved radar with John Randall, and then went to America with the British A-bomb team to work on the separation of uranium isotopes. In Cambridge he was so inhibited that he could only stammer out his love from the other side of the room. It was an unsuccessful approach. In America, however, he made his girlfriend pregnant, and got married and was divorced before the baby was born. At the end of the war Wilkins returned to work under Randall, first at St. Andrews, and then at King's College, London. He pays tribute to Randall's brilliance as an organiser of research, but he makes the point that Randall was always keen to ensure that he got as much credit as possible; in contrast to Wilkins' own opinion that science should be open with a mutual sharing of ideas without competition and the cornering of areas of research. At King's Wilkins became interested in the structure of DNA. At first it was thought to be just another protein, but it soon became apparent that it had genetic significance. The story, as Wilkins tells it, is complex. He is anxious to do justice to everyone who contributed to the final unravelling of the double helix. Initially, he developed X ray diffraction techniques himself in order to decipher DNA's structure , but was taken off this and the work was given to Rosalind Franklin by Randall - Wilkins thinks because she was more directly under Randall's control, and therefore more credit would go to him. Wilkins' private life became more exciting as he joined in London's Bohemian artistic circles. The A-bomb maker later became an active member of CND. Meanwhile Crick and Watson at the Cavendish Laboratories at Cambridge had tried and failed to make a model of DNA from the experimental evidence they had been freely given. An informal agreement gave research on DNA to King's ,and Cambridge gave up. Then the story becomes a complicated recital of who told what to whom when. Those who want the details should read the book. Basically, Rosalind Franklin produced a clear X ray diffraction image of DNA which clearly showed that it was a double helix, but sat on it for some time and refused to see its significance. When he was finally given the photograph in January 1953, Wilkins passed this and all his other information on to Crick and Watson. This included the key observation from Chagraff that the different bases in DNA were in a 1:1 ratio. They had learned from the son of the great American scientist Linus Pauling that the race was on to decode the structure of DNA. Crick and Watson went back to Cambridge and produced their famous model of the double helix a few weeks later. When Wilkins saw it, he was staggered and humiliated that all the evidence he had accumulated had been fitted together so brilliantly. He was offered his name to a joint paper in the names of the three of them, but refused. What follows are a series of post-scripts. Work continued to confirm the double helix structure, and Wilkins published a series of papers on this. Watson wrote "The Double Helix" but Wilkins and Crick objected so much to the original draft, including its snide references to "Rosie Franklin" that the original publisher withdrew. It went on to be a scientific best seller. In 1962 Wilkins collected his Nobel Prize along with Crick and Watson, but it is difficult not to agree with title of the book since it was Francis Crick and James Watson who had the joint intuition and who made the grand synthesis. Rosalind Franklin might have collected a Nobel Prize as well had she not already died of cancer at the tragically early age of 37. However she kept key evidence to herself for too long, and misunderstood it. She was given every opportunity, which she took, to publish her results and her interpretations of them. On Wilkins' evidence it is difficult to regard her as a martyr to feminist science. Wilkins verdict on the total process was that all at King's College, including himself, were at fault in not working together more harmoniously and not including the Cambridge pair fully in their research. His conclusion is that true science should be an open system in which everybody shares all their results in the common search for truth. Perhaps this is indeed as it should be. One observes sadly, however, that today an increasing amount of scientific research takes place behind locked doors in the name of military secrecy, and commercially valuable patents.