Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins CBE FRS (1916-2004) was a New Zealand-born British biophysicist and Nobel laureate whose research spanned multiple areas of physics and biophysics: phosphorescence, isotope separation, optical microscopy, and X-ray diffraction were among the disciplines to which he contributed. He is known for his work at King's College London on the structure of DNA. In 1953, Wilkins' group coordinator Sir John Randall instructed Raymond Gosling to hand over to Wilkins a high- quality image of "B" form DNA, which Gosling had made in 1952, after which his supervisor Rosalind Franklin "put it aside" as she was leaving King's College London. Wilkins showed it to Watson. This image, along with the knowledge that Linus Pauling had proposed an incorrect structure of DNA, "mobilised" Watson and Crick to restart model building. With additional information from research reports by Wilkins and Franklin, obtained via Max Perutz, Watson and Crick correctly described the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953. Wilkins continued to test, verify, and make significant corrections to the Watson-Crick DNA model and to study the structure of RNA. Wilkins, Crick, and Watson were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. This is the first of a series of papers containing such corrections to the model.