7. Who is Raymond Gosling?

Raymond Gosling was born in 1926 and attended school in Wembley and studied physics at University College London from 1944 to 1947. He was a hospital physicist at the King’s Fund and Middlesex Hospital between 1947 and 1949 before joining King’s as a research student.

Gosling pioneered x-ray diffraction research at King’s and collaborated closely with Maurice Wilkins in analysing samples of DNA which the two men prepared by hydrating and drawing out into spider’s-web filaments and photographing in a hydrogen atmosphere. Together they produced the first crystalline diffraction photographs at King’s showing an x-pattern of black dots. Gosling was assigned to Rosalind Franklin when she began work at King’s in 1951 and who acted as his academic supervisor. During the following two years, they worked closely together to perfect the technique of x-ray diffraction photography of DNA and obtained some of the sharpest pictures from which measurements might be obtained that they hoped would determine the structure of the two principal forms of DNA Franklin had studied – the so-called A and B forms.

Gosling briefly remained at King’s following 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. Ray Gosling has served on numerous committees of the University of London, notably relating to radiological science, and retains an active professional involvement in medical physics.