WILKINS, Maurice (1916-2004). Autograph letter signed with initial (“M.”) to Leonard Hamilton, King’s College, London, 28 May 1953.

Two pages recto and verso, 227 x 178mm (couple of minor spots).

“We will have another note in Nature in a few weeks showing more conclusive evidence for the helical structure from study of crystalline DNA (your mouse S180)”

Another urgent letter from Maurice Wilkins, cajoling more DNA from Leonard Hamilton in the very busy spring of 1953. The groundbreaking Nature articles had appeared in April and May and Wilkins’s next article appeared there in October, co-authored with Seeds, Stokes and Wilson. In part:

“URGENT!*!?! Not to be put in file! Awaiting further consideration! … We want to know what the salt is likely to be in the specimens it saves us time if you tell us. The next time you get some DNA made can you get them to wash it more or dialyse more to get all the inorganic salt out? We need ~100 mgms of crystalline DNA salt free for density & water content measurements to correlate with Xray pictures … We have no good crystalline Signer material left. You can be a big help to us by sending more soon. Our work is worth helping.”

Wilkins continues by sharing more details of the “DNA hysteria” that has gripped his colleagues, foremost their mutual friend Francis Crick; and of Pauling’s Pasadena conference that fall. “Since the journalists & Bragg got hold of the ‘DNA story’ life is hell. Randall got a trans Atlantic phone call from FO Schmitt to go and open the new MIT buildings with a speech. As Bragg talks DNA so is Randall. That means a lot of bloody work for me writing ‘notes’. Oh hell. / Do please reply soon. The nature of the gene depends on it. What piffle. M.” Wilkins is referring to Crick’s boss, Sir Lawrence Bragg (who was actually the first person to publicly announce the DNA discovery, at a conference on 8 May 1953) and to J.T. Randall, Wilkins’s boss and the Head of the Physics Department at King’s College.