Raymond Gosling

Raymond Gosling is a distinguished scientist who worked with both Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin in deducing the structure of DNA.

Related Topics:
Maurice Wilkins - Rosalind Franklin - DNA

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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.

Related Topics:
University College London - King's College London

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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.

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Gosling was then assigned to Rosalind Franklin when she joined King?s 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 Nobel Prize for Francis Crick, James D. Watson and Maurice Wilkins. Franklin died in 1958 of cancer, probably because of exposure to X-rays, and a rule of the Nobel Committee is that the prize is never given posthumously.

Related Topics:
DNA - Nobel Prize - Francis Crick - James D. Watson - 1958

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Gosling briefly remained at King?s 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.

Related Topics:
University of St Andrews - University of the West Indies - Guy's Hospital - University of London

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• http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/ppro/dna/scientists.html for the King's College London team of - in alphabetical order - Franklin, Gosling, Randall, Stokes, Wilkins, and Wilson; they may have been 'dysfunctional' but their collective achievement has been somewhat overshadowed by Messrs. Watson & Crick/the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge. Time to put King's College London back on the map! There is currently far too much focus on Rosalind Franklin alone.