Raymond Gosling

Raymond Gosling
Professor Raymond Gosling in 2003 "DNA at King's - the continuing story: 50th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA"
Born	(1926-07-15)15 July 1926 Wembley, London, England, UK
Died	18 May 2015(2015-05-18) (aged 88)
Residence	London, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Fields	Physics
Institutions	King's College London
Alma mater	University College London King's College London
Known for	DNA

Raymond G. Gosling (15 July 1926 – 18 May 2015) was a British scientist who deduced the structure of DNA with Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at King's College, London.

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 where he eventually received his PhD.

At King's College London, Gosling worked on X-ray diffraction with Maurice Wilkins, analyzing samples of DNA which they prepared by hydrating and drawing out into thin filaments and photographing in a hydrogen atmosphere.

Gosling was then assigned to Rosalind Franklin when she joined King's College in 1951. They worked under the direction of Sir John Randall. Together they produced the first X-ray diffraction photographs of the "form B" paracrystalline arrays of highly hydrated DNA. 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. Gosling made the X-ray diffraction image of DNA known as Photograph 51. 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 DNA double helix papers published in Nature in April 1953.

His other KCL colleagues included Alex Stokes and Herbert Wilson.