Obituaries — Maurice Wilkins

I seek leave to move a non-debatable, non-controversial motion concerning the death in London last night of Maurice Wilkins.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Leave is sought for that. Is there any objection? There appears to be none.

Maurice Wilkins, who died in London last night aged 88, was one of three people who were instrumental in discovering the helix structure of DNA. He is one of only three Nobel Prize winners from New Zealand, and his death now leaves only one Nobel Prize winner left, and that is Alan MacDiarmid. I read with great interest about the work he had conducted—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I wonder whether the member could just move the motion first.

I said: “I seek leave to move …”.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The member has been given leave to move, so just move the motion, please.

I move the motion.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: We will construct something from that. I know what the member’s intention is, and I have no desire in any way to denigrate this person, who was a very, very fine New Zealander. I presume the member is moving a motion acknowledging his life and works.

Yes, indeed.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

I would like to add the Government’s comments to the motion properly put by the member who has just resumed his seat. Maurice Wilkins was born and raised in the lower half of the North Island and attended Victoria University. His main contribution to the world of science—

💬 Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I have no objection at all to members of the House on this occasion expressing their views, sentiments, and concern about the loss to the scientific community of a prominent scientist who happened also to be a prominent New Zealander. You have just asked Maurice Williamson to resume his seat—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: No, I asked him to move the motion. He could have carried on speaking at any time.

💬 Gerry Brownlee: Well, the inference taken was that you had had enough of listening to the member, and wanted him to sit down. I am just going to say that if Mr Hodgson is going to add his comments, and others intend to do that as well, I think it would be fair to give Mr Williamson the opportunity to have his comments put on the Hansard record. But he did seek leave for a non-debatable motion.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The problem I have is that Mr Williamson then did not move a motion; he just made some comments. No one objected when I asked whether there was any objection—there was not any—and I then called the member. The member could then have moved the motion; he would have been able to do so. All that I wanted him to do was to move the motion. I assumed that because he had already begun talking about this very influential New Zealander, we would construct a motion along those lines. That is why I accepted what he did. [Interruption] Well, perhaps the member would like to do that now.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: I certainly was going to move a motion, but wanted to put a bit of background. I will start with the motion.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: That is right.

I move, That this House do express great sympathy at the loss of Maurice Wilkins, a prominent New Zealander, famous for his work with DNA and on the Manhattan Project for the atomic bomb. Some people in this House will not know that he worked on the atomic bomb. Interestingly, he was so appalled at the ability of that device to take such an enormous amount of life that he then became a prominent member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and worked on that for a long time in his life. One of the most interesting things I found on the Internet, in an item about his death, was that he was born in Pongaroa, in the Wairarapa, and the Internet article stated that the nearest big town to that is Pahiatua—which I found quite fascinating. I hope this House does express that sympathy.

I shall continue with some brief remarks. I note that having graduated from Victoria University, Dr Wilkins spent most of the rest of his life in Britain, although sometimes in the United States. Having worked on the Manhattan Project as a physicist, he then made his contribution in the emerging collision between physics and biology, as an X-ray diffraction expert. He produced a photograph in 1953 from which, weeks later, Watson and Crick derived the structure of DNA, thus opening an era that today we call biotechnology. He was the third man of DNA, and his passing is sorely missed.

Motion agreed to.