George Wells Beadle

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George Wells Beadle (born October 22, 1903 in Wahoo , Nebraska , † June 9, 1989 in Pomona , California ) was an American biologist and biochemist who primarily dealt with genetics and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1958.

life and work

Beadle was born the son of a farmer, graduated from the College of Agriculture at Lincoln and received a bachelor's degree from the University of Nebraska in 1926. He made his master's degree in 1927 and went to Cornell University in Ithaca.

In 1950 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and in 1958, together with Edward Lawrie Tatum, half a Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology . The reason for the award was her discovery that genes regulate biochemical processes within cells . The second half of the Nobel Prize in 1958 went to Joshua Lederberg .

In their scientific studies, Beadle and Tatum exposed the bread mold Neurospora crassa to X-rays and thereby generated mutations. In a series of experiments they were able to show that these mutations lead to changes in specific enzymes. These experiments led her to the thesis that there is a direct connection between genes and enzymatic reactions. This hypothesis is also known as the one-gene-one-enzyme hypothesis .

Beadle received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Nebraska in 1928 . He received his PhD from Cornell University in 1931. In 1933 he worked with Nobel Prize winner Thomas Hunt Morgan at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He was a professor at both Harvard University and Stanford University . He headed the University of Chicago as President from 1961 to 1968. In 1946 Beadle was President of the Genetics Society of America .

membership

In 1944, Beadle was elected to the National Academy of Sciences , 1945 to the American Philosophical Society, and 1946 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Works

  • with M. Beadle: Genetics and Modern Biology. 1963.
  • George Wells Beadle and Muriel Barnett Beadle : The Language of Life. An Introduction to the Science of Genetics. Doubleday, New York 1966.
    • dt .: The language of life. An introduction to genetics. Translated by Hermann Becht. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1969 (= conditio humana ).
  • Sciences and Imagination. New York 1976.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Curt Stern: George W. Beadle . In: Science . tape 119 , no. 3086 , February 19, 1954, ISSN  0036-8075 , p. 229–230 , doi : 10.1126 / science.119.3086.229 , PMID 13135519 ( sciencemag.org [accessed September 25, 2016]).
  2. ^ Member History: George W. Beadle. American Philosophical Society, accessed April 26, 2018 .
  3. Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter B. (PDF; 1.2 MB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved February 6, 2018 .