Raymond Gosling
Raymond Gosling is a distinguished scientist who worked with both Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at King's College London in deducing the structure of DNA.
He was born in 1926 and attended school in Wembley. He studied physics at University College London from 1944 to 1947 and became a hospital physicist at the King’s Fund and Middlesex Hospital between 1947 and 1949 before joining King's College London as a research student.
At King’s College London, Gosling worked on X-ray diffraction with Maurice Wilkins, analysing samples of DNA which they prepared by hydrating and drawing out into thin filaments and photographing in a hydrogen atmosphere. Together they produced the first X-ray diffraction photographs of the "form B" crystalline arrays of highly hydrated DNA.
Gosling was then assigned to Rosalind Franklin when she joined King’s College London in 1951. She was his academic supervisor. During the next two years, the pair worked closely together to perfect the technique of x-ray diffraction photography of DNA and obtained at the time the sharpest diffraction images of DNA. This work led directly to the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine being awarded to Francis Crick, James D. Watson and Maurice Wilkins. Gosling was the co-author with Franklin of one of the three papers published in "Nature" in April 1953; Franklin died in 1958 of cancer and a rule of the Nobel Committee is that the prize is never given posthumously. Sir Lawrence Bragg of the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge nominated Maurice Wilkins for a third share of the Nobel Prize to recognise the contribution made by Kings's College London.
Gosling briefly remained at King’s College London following the completion of his thesis in 1954 before lecturing in physics at Queen’s College, University of St Andrews, and at the University of the West Indies. He returned to the UK in 1967 and became Lecturer and Reader at Guy's Hospital Medical School, and Professor and Emeritus Professor in Physics Applied to Medicine from 1984. Gosling has served on numerous committees of the University of London, notably relating to radiological science, and still retains an active professional involvement in medical physics.
External links
- 40th anniversary plaque( From left: Raymond Gosling, Herbert Wilson, Maurice Wilkins and Alec Stokes)
- King's College site
Books featuring Raymond Gosling
- Chomet, S. (Ed.), D.N.A. Genesis of a Discovery, 1994, Newman- Hemisphere Press, London; NB a few copies are available from Newman-Hemisphere at 101 Swan Court, London SW3 5RY(phone: 07092 060530).
- Wilkins, Maurice, The Third Man of the Double Helix: The Autobiography of Maurice Wilkins ISBN 0198606656.
 | DNA structure research at King's College London 1947-1959 Maurice Wilkins | Rosalind Franklin | Raymond Gosling | Alec Stokes | Herbert Wilson | John Randall| |  |
