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Maurice Wilkins AMS

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles Start Price:1,000.00 USD Estimated At:NA
Maurice Wilkins AMS
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Important Maurice Wilkins autograph manuscript signed, dated 10 June 1999. Detailed manuscript references a June 1950 letter Wilkins wrote to Francis Crick regarding exciting X-ray photographs of DNA; lot includes a photocopy of that original letter, as well as a photocopy of notes from a meeting in Naples where Wilkins presented his new research. Wilkins' handwritten manuscript, being offered here, specifically talks about the first clear X-Ray diffraction image that showed a crystalline DNA pattern, which ''…implied basic simplicity in the DNA and therefore real possibilities of finding its structure…'' Interestingly, however, the 1950 documents don't focus so much on the crystallinity (even stating that they are only crystalline under certain conditions) as they do on the capability of the DNA fibers to stretch. Manuscript reads in full: ''After studying the stretching & necking of DNA fibres [Raymond] Gosling & I set up a preliminary X-ray equipment and, keeping the fibres humid, we got the first clear X-ray diffraction showing DNA was crystalline. I showed that pattern in 1951 at the Naples meeting and Jim Watson was switched on because he realized that the crystallinity implied basic simplicity in the DNA and therefore real possibilities of finding its structure. I enclose photostat of the relevant discussion at Naples. [William] Astbury's best X-ray results were before the war & showed two patterns superimposed and that was decidedly confusing. We published the results of stretching DNA fibres and the idea of tilting & sliding the flat bases in DNA helped Watson & Crick towards the Double Helix. Crick was not specifically interested in my work on DNA until Watson brought to him in 1951 the new ideas of the U.S. Phage Group under Delbruck. Always Crick was clear about the great importance of gene structure but it was not realized in 1950 except in special labs like ours that genes were DNA and not protein. M Wilkins / 10 June 99''. Manuscript measures 8.25'' x 11.5'' on one page and is signed ''M Wilkins''. Fine condition. Along with Crick and James Watson, Wilkins won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine ''for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material'' or, more to the point, their discovery of the double helix which holds the mysteries of our genetic code.