Esther Lederberg

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Esther Lederberg in the laboratory at Stanford University

Esther Miriam Lederberg (born December 18, 1922 in the Bronx in New York , † November 11, 2006 in Stanford ) was an American microbiologist and genetic engineer .

Scientific achievements

Lederberg discovered the lambda phage in 1950 . Together with her husband Joshua Lederberg , she discovered the transfer of genes between bacteria by specific transduction and together with him developed the stamping technique in microbiology , in which a bacterial colony can be transferred in the same arrangement onto the surface of another culture medium. She was also instrumental in the discovery of the F plasmid .

Lederberg founded and ran the Plasmid Reference Center , an international registry for plasmids , transposons, and insertion sequences at Stanford University .

Private

Esther Lederberg was born as Esther Miriam Zimmer in New York in 1922 as the daughter of Austrian / Hungarian emigrants. In December 1946 she married her colleague Joshua Lederberg . The marriage ended in divorce after 20 years. In 1993 she married the engineer Matthew Simon. In 2006 she died in Stanford from pneumonia associated with heart failure .

literature

  • Rachel Ignotofsky: Fearless Women Reaching for the Stars: 50 Portraits of Fascinating Women Scientists , mvg Verlag, 2018, ISBN 978-3868829396 , page 83, limited preview in Google Book Search

Web links

Commons : Esther Lederberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Walt Nakonechny: Invisible Esther: The 'other' Lederberg jax.org
  2. ↑ Jane J. Lee: 6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism. In: National Geographic, May 19, 2013.
  3. ↑ Lederberg, J., Cavalli, LL, and Lederberg, EM, Nov. 1952, "Sex compatibility in Escherichia coli", Genetics 37 (6): 720-730
personal data
SURNAME Lederberg, Esther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lederberg, Esther Miriam; Zimmer, Esther Miriam (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geneticist and microbiologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 18, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH New York , USA
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 2006
Place of death Stanford , California , USA