Norman Davidson
Norman Ralph Davidson (born April 5, 1916 in Chicago , Illinois , † February 14, 2002 in Pasadena , California ) was an American chemist who dealt with biochemistry .
Davidson studied chemistry at the University of Chicago (Bachelor in 1937), at the University of Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar ), with a further Bachelor degree in 1939, and in 1941 studied with Hermann Irving Schlesinger at the University of Chicago with the subject The Polymerization of organo-aluminum compounds doctorate . During the Second World War he worked at Columbia University and then at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago on the Manhattan Project (production of transurans ). In 1942 he was an instructor at the Illinois Institute of Technology . After World War II, he was briefly at the RCA laboratories (where he worked on early electron microscopes) and then went to Caltech , where he became an instructor, associate professor in 1952 and professor in 1957. In 1982 he became Norman Chandler Professor of Chemical Biology and in 1986 Professor Emeritus. From 1990 he was Executive Officer of the Department of Biology. He was a scientific advisor at Amgen .
Davidson researched ultrafast chemical reactions (with flash photolysis ) in the 1950s and made important contributions to the study of the genome in the 1960s, for example his investigation of the reversal of the denaturation of DNA ( renaturation ), important in genetic engineering, or the decoding of the Gene structure of r-RNA and t-RNA molecules. Later he dealt with neuroscience .
In 1996 he received the National Medal of Science , in 1980 he was named California Scientist of the Year, in 1989 he received the Welch Award in Chemistry , in 1971 the Debye Award and in 1985 the Dickson Prize in Science . In 1962 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1960), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1984) and an honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago (1992).
He was married and had four children.
He should not be confused with James Norman Davidson (1911–1972), Professor of Biochemistry in Glasgow .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ biographical data, publications and Academic pedigree of Norman Davidson at academictree.org, accessed on 29 January 2018th
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Davidson, Norman |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Davidson, Norman Ralph (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American chemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 5, 1916 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Chicago , Illinois |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 14, 2002 |
| Place of death | Pasadena , California |