The Third Man of the Double Helix: The Autobiography of Maurice Wilkins

Quick, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the double helical structure of DNA? Most people would say Watson and Crick. But most people would make Maurice Wilkins very upset. The Rodney Dangerfield of biology, Wilkins shared the prize with Watson and Crick but missed out on the limelight, due largely to Watson’s hit book, The Double Helix. Wilkins thought the book was so misleading he asked Harvard University Press not to publish it. Things have quieted down a bit now, and Wilkins is now telling the story his way. This book tells how he showed his colleagues the x-ray picture that gave them their crucial insight, and about his interactions with Rosalind Franklin, the researcher who actually created the picture, and who also received very little credit for her role in the discovery. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the DNA discovery. Finally Wilkins gets to have his say.