King's College London Department of Biophysics

Brief list

KDBP/1/1-6 Slides produced by the Biophysics Unit/Department of Biophysics, 1949-1984

KDBP/2/1-7 Indexes to the slides produced by the Biophysics Unit/Department of Biophysics, 1949-1984

KDBP/3 KCL Photographic prints relating to research conducted in the Biophysics Unit/Department of Biophysics, and to the staff and premises of the department, 1949-1992
DBP/3/1/1-10 Photographic prints relating to research on the structure of DNA, 1952-1969
KDBP/3/2/1-24 Photographs relating to research conducted within the Biophysics Unit/Department of Biophysics, 1959-1984
KDBP/3/3 Photographs relating to the staff and premises of the Biophysics Unit/Department of Biophysics, 1950-1992

KDBP/4/1-71 Journal articles written or co-written by staff of the Biophysics Unit/Department of Biophysics, 1945-1976

KDBP/5/1-2 Other papers relating to the history of the Biophysics Unit/Department of Biophysics, 1963-1964

See also the papers of Maurice Wilkins (K/PP178) for his administrative papers as Director of the Department, 1970-1980

Wellcome Collection does not hold a digitised copy of all items in this collection. A total of 4013 images were selected from the KCL Biophysics Unit/Department of Biophysics collection, relating to the research of Maurice Wilkins or research based on DNA/RNA. This catalogue only includes items that have been digitised. Items not digitised can be viewed in the reading room at King's College London, Archives and Special Collections. Please contact King's College London, Archives and Special Collections for a fuller catalogue.

1945-1992

Acetate/glass slides

The Department of Biophysics began as the Medical Research Council (MRC) funded Biophysics Research Unit, 1946, attached to the Department of Physics, with John Turton Randall as first Director. It moved into the purpose-built Wheatstone Physics Laboratory in the basement of the main King's Building, 1952. Staff of the Unit published preliminary findings on the structure of DNA in the April 1953 edition of Nature, simultaneously with James Watson and Francis Crick, Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge. After years of further research, Maurice Wilkins was jointly awarded, with Watson and Crick, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 1962. The Unit moved to new premises in Drury Lane in 1964 and became the Department of Biophysics, with research groups working on cilia and flagella, muscle structure, nucleic acid structure, nuclear and chromosome structure, and x-ray diffraction studies of DNA and RNA. Randall retired in 1970, and was succeeded by Maurice Wilkins, 1970-1981. In 1989 the Department was renamed the Randall Institute, and relocated in 2001 to New Hunt's House, Guy's Campus, as the Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics, within the School of Biomedical Sciences.

King's College London

Available at King's College London, Archives and Special Collections, subject to signature of reader's undertaking form.

A digitised copy is held by the Wellcome Library as part of the Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics programme. Not all series within this collection have been digitised.

The original material is held at King's College London, Archives and Special Collections. This catalogue is held by the Wellcome Library as part of the Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics programme.