| Joshua Lederberg |
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| Joshua
Lederberg was born in New Jersey on May 23, 1925. He attended public
school in New York
City, including the prestigious New York City Stuyvesant High School.
He received his bachelor’s degree in zoology from Columbia
University. Lederberg went on to study medicine at Columbia as well
as in the U.S. Navy. Lederberg never finished medical school, however.
Instead, he ventured on to Yale in 1945. Heearned his Ph.D. in zoology
from Yale in 1948. During this time
he had the opportunity to work with Edward Tatum researching genetic
recombination and the organization of the genetic material in bacteria. |
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This opportunity arose as a result of a paper published by Oswald
Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty the previous year. The paper
specified the chemical nature of DNA and inspired Lederberg to research
the possibility of sexual reproduction in bacteria. At the time bacteria
were thought to only reproduce asexually. Lederberg’s studies
led him to determine various bacteria can indeed combine their genetic
material. As a result Lederberg was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1958.
Lederberg went on to work as a genetics professor at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University. He is currently a professor emeritus of molecular genetics and informatics at The Rockefeller University, New York. Resources http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/BB/Views/Exhibit/narrative/biographical.html http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1958/lederberg-bio.html |
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