Maurice Wilkins was born in England on August 18, 1918. He received his MD from Cambridge University in England in 1941 and joined the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University as a research assistant. In 1946 he joined the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Oxford University, where he became a fellow in 1948 and began research on the structure of DNA. In 1952 he discovered the double helix structure of DNA
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He received a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1960 "for his work on the physical and chemical properties of biological substances." Wilkins continued his work on DNA, discovering the adenine-thymine base pair structure in 1961. In 1968 he discovered that DNA contains a histone protein that serves to pack DNA into chromatin, the structure that consists of DNA wrapped around proteins that controls gene expression. In 1973 he discovered that chromosomes contain proteins called cohesins, which serve to package DNA together during cell division.
He also discovered centromere proteins, which enable chromosomes to replicate during cell division. Wilkins retired from Oxford University in 1976 and became a professor emeritus at the university.
