Talk:Maurice Wilkins

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Please amend the following statement -

"He published his autobiography, "The Third Man of the Double Helix," in 2003, but does not specifically credit Stokes and Wilson as co-authors of their paper in "Nature". Whether this was deliberate on his part or just down to rather poor sub-editing by OUP is not known".


As a former student of his in the 1980's, I can attest to the fact he ALWAYS and invariably credited Stokes (who taught me Kinetic Theory) and Wilson, in every lecture, in every conversation, and even at his 80th Birthday party, which I attended. The omission is purely down to poor sub-editing, and does him a great discourtesy, as he was a generous and self-effacing bloke. Who are you, by the way?

Dr. J. T. Lofthouse.



ok i think that maurice is was a great scientist i cany say i no much about her but i would like to no more if anybody has a web link or info please send it to me at vinndawg11@aol.com much appreiciated vinny

DR. LOFTHOUSE

OK SO WHO WROTE THE SILLY CAPTION TO THE COLOUR PICTURE? IT WAS CAPTIONED "KING'S COLLEGE LONDON", WHEN IT IS OBVIOUSLY "KING'S CHAPEL, CAMBRIDGE"; SOMEONE JUST CANNOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE! Nitramrekcap 10:47, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

PS AS THE ILLUSTRATION HAS GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH MAURICE WILKINS WHATSOEVER (HIS CAMBRIDGE COLLEGE WAS ST. JOHN'S BY THE WAY) I SUGGEST THAT WHOEVER ADDED IT IN ERROR SHOULD REMOVE IT ASAP? Nitramrekcap 10:57, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

I'll remove the picture. The caption on this image at wikimedia commons says "King's College". Does anyone know of a public domain or GFDL image of Wilkins? --JWSchmidt 12:24, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Well Done John for changing the image and tidying up the layout of the text; I will send you a good image of Wilkins by e-mail; BUT please do something about those horrible multi-coloured boxes, the colours don't do justice to the six scientists concerned AND what about adding all of the rest of the King's College LONDON team? Nitramrekcap 12:34, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

If you have an image, please make sure you know its copyright status. If you give me a list of what you count as the King's College LONDON team, I will make a navigation box to link them together. --JWSchmidt 12:39, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
   DNA structure research at King's College London 1947-1959
  Maurice Wilkins | Rosalind Franklin | Raymond Gosling | Alec Stokes | Herbert Wilson

CONGRATULATIONS TO WHOEVER ADDED THE KCL LOGO AND LINKED FIVE OF THE "KING'S COLLEGE LONDON" SIX TOGETHER! BUT WHERE IS SIR JOHN (TURTON) RANDALL - THE LEADING LIGHT OF KING'S DNA RESEARCH? ALSO AT THE RISK OF BEING PEDANTIC, LET'S HAVE THEM IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER? Nitramrekcap 15:06, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Mr Schmidt I guess you are associated with King's College and so wish to support it, but Wikipedia is not the medium for this. As I understand the objective of an encyclopaedia, articles are supposed to be about the title at the top of each page. The main illustration of this article on Maurice Wilkins should therefore be a photograph of Maurice Wilkins. A photograph of his house would perhaps tell more about his personality than a picture of the college and its logo. The article already quite clearly states he worked at King's College. Why is a photograph of King's College and its logo needed to illustrate this simple fact? They will have greater relevance in the article about King's College. There are already hyperlinks in the article for all the people involved in the discovery of DNA's structure, where they had any relationship with Maurice Wilkins. Duplicating links to these people is not necessary. However I could understand why the King's College web-site might wish to commemorate the pioneers of DNA in this way. JMcC 20:35, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

I have no association with or interest in King's College and I have made no attempt to "support it". It is a service to wikipedia readers to provide ways of helping them find multiple articles that are related to a topic that they are interested in. Most people who come to the Maurice Wilkins article will do so because of his research on DNA. Such wikipedia users may want to make use of a navigation box linking to other pages about the discovery of the structure of DNA. Wilkins was part of a group of people at King's College who participated in research on DNA. Nitramrekcap suggested that there be a way of linking this group of pages together. Some of us have been making an effort to find an image of Wilkins that can be used on wikipedia. The image of a building at King's College is a place keeper until a better image can be obtained. --JWSchmidt 22:15, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
Good to see that someone else, User:80.177.0.93, agrees with me about the irrelevant logo and photo. I also notice that it has been removed from Rosalind Franklin's article. Somehow the consenus there must have been to remove it. If so, the same reasoning should apply here. Incidentally why are Linus Pauling and Max Delbruck associated with King's College? JMcC 14:39, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
Two editors of Rosalind Franklin's article felt that since Franklin had not gotten along with people like Wilkins, Wikipedia should not include her in a navigation box with people like Wilkins. In my view, Wikipedia should help the reader. Many people who come to the articles about Wilkins and Franklin will find it useful to have a navigation box linking to other people involved in the discovery of the structure of DNA. Linus Pauling and Max Delbruck are not associated with King's College. What we need is a Wikipedia editor who can get someone to allow a photo of Wilkins to be used under the GFDL. --JWSchmidt 18:51, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Having just now written an article related to the discovery of the structure of DNA, I was disturbed to note that Rosalind Franklin's name was omitted from the list of scientists who contributed to work on the molecule. In fact, the sordid story of her seminal research at King's College, London being shown to Watson & Crick without her knowledge in advance of their 1953 papers in Nature, was first described by Anne Sayre in "Rosalind Franklin & DNA" (Norton, 1975). followed by Brenda Maddox's "Dark Lady of DNA" (Harper Collins, 2002) This is well-known by now, since a film on PBS titled "The Secret of Photo 51' on the subject was screened over PBS and raised quite a storm. A university in North Chicago was renamed the "Rosalind Franklin University of Science and Medicine". In my humble opinion, she was the principal discoverer of the structure of DNA. Nobel laureates Watson, Crick & Wilkins were very bright people, but Rosalind too was brilliant and her Photo 51 - an x-ray diffraction photo of the hydrated form of DNA, and calcultions were indispensable for constructing their correct model.

[edit] Edits by a banned user

According to the replies to this Incident report, the banned user Amorrow is known to edit using IP addresses that start with numbers such as 75, 68 and 67. Augaeth started the King's College DNA controversy article and is listed as a suspected puppet of Amorrow. I guess all edits by the following users should be carefully examined and deleted if they do not contribute to the encyclopedia:

[edit] DNA Pioneers dropdown menu: addition of King's College London

Is the addition of KCL to the list a joke or is someone seriously unbalanced? I claim equal rights for the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge of course; so why just add KCL to the list? Nitramrekcap

[edit] Article needs infobox

This article needs Template:Infobox Scientist

195.92.67.75mp195.92.67.75

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