Collection K/PP178 - WILKINS, Maurice Hugh Frederick (1916-2004)

Papers of Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins, 1854-2004, including: laboratory notebooks, graphs, data sets, notes, x-ray diffraction photographs and published articles relating to his scientific research, 1948-1976, chiefly his work on the structure of DNA, 1947-1966; correspondence, 1948-2004, with and about scientific colleagues, including Struther Arnott, Allen Blaurock, Francis Crick, Boris Ephrussi, Harriet Ephrussi-Taylor, Bruce Fraser, Meyer Friedman, Raymond Gosling, Leonard Hamilton, John Kendrew, Robert Langridge, Don Marvin, Linus Pauling, Max Perutz, John Randall, Alec Stokes, James Watson and Herbert Wilson.  Correspondence, notes and articles, 1950-2003, relating to research on the history of the discovery of the structure of DNA, including: copies of Rosalind Franklin’s laboratory notebooks and articles, 1951-1953, relating to her DNA research; correspondence, 1967-2003, with writers on DNA history, including Aaron Klug, Robert Olby, Meyer Friedman, Horace Judson and Watson Fuller; unpublished articles and talks on DNA history by Wilkins, 1975-1987.  Drafts, notes, correspondence and collected background research relating to Wilkins’ autobiography, The third man of the double helix (Oxford University Press, 2003).  Papers relating to Wilkins’ education and early career, 1928-1942, including: teenage essays and fiction on the role of science, 1928-1934; notes, articles and photographs, 1937-1938, relating to his student activities, including physics experiments, and photographs relating to his incendiary bomb testing for Cambridge Scientists Anti-War Group, 1938.  Correspondence, memoranda, minutes, reports and notes, 1962-1982, relating to the administration of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Biophysics Unit, King’s College London (from 1964, the Department of Biophysics), on topics including funding, staffing, equipment provision and teaching.  Correspondence, course handouts, student essays (CLOSED) and background material, 1971-1996, relating to the undergraduate course, ‘The social impact of the biosciences’, created and run by Wilkins, 1972-1982.  Correspondence, newsletters and conference papers relating to Wilkins’ involvement in political pressure groups, 1968-2003, notably the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (of which Wilkins was founding President, 1969-1991), Food and Disarmament International (Wilkins’ was founding President, 1984-2004), the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and the Pugwash Conferences on World Affairs.  Audio recordings, 1972-1996, including lectures by Wilkins on: social responsibility in science; his Eddington Memorial Lectures,Cambridge, 1977-1978, on the history and philosophy of science; nuclear disarmament, 1981; his retirement speech, 1982; the history of DNA.