Alex Stokes

Who was Alex Stokes?

Alexander Rawson Stokes was a co-author of the second of the three papers published sequentially in Nature on 25 April 1953 announcing the presumed molecular structure of DNA. The first was authored by Francis Crick and James Watson, and the third by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling. The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 1962 to Crick, Watson and Wilkins for this work. In 1993, on the 40th anniversary of the publication of the molecular structure of DNA, a plaque was erected in the Quad of the Strand campus of King's College London commemorating the contributions of Franklin, Gosling, Stokes, Wilson and Wilkins to DNA X-ray diffraction studies.