Wilkins was the Assistant Director of the Biophysics Unit at Kings College, and responsible for work on the structure of DNA. Wilkins and a graduate student, Raymond Gosling, got the first X-ray diffraction photos of DNA in 1950. He introduced Francis Crick to the importance of DNA, and hired Rosalind Franklin on a three-year grant. Franklin made progress with the crystallography, and produced some better photographs of the structure. 