Seymour Benzer

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Seymour Benzer (1974)

Seymour Benzer (born October 15, 1921 in New York City , † November 30, 2007 in Pasadena (California) ) was an American biophysicist . He was considered one of the most renowned molecular biologists of his time.

Life

Benzer, son of the Jewish-Polish family "Sochaczew" who immigrated to New York in 1910, was born in the South Bronx and grew up in Bensonhurst , New York. He studied physics at Brooklyn College and Purdue University . During the Second World War he worked at the chair of Karl Lark-Horovitz (1892–1958) on a radar project.

In 1947 he completed his PhD at Purdue University in the field of condensed matter . In 1947 he became a professor at Purdue University. Inspired by the work of Erwin Schrödinger “What is life? - Looking at the living cell through the eyes of the physicist. ” Benzer switched to biology and biophysics at an early stage and attended Max Delbrück lectures at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory .

He was appointed associate professor in 1953 and full professor in 1958 .

He took a leave of absence from Purdue University and did research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Pasteur Institute . In particular, he dealt with the research of the molecular biologists Renato Dulbecco , Salvador Edward Luria and James Watson . 1957/58 he worked at Caltech in the research group of Francis Crick and at the Cavendish Laboratory together with Sydney Brenner , William Lawrence Bragg , George Streisinger (1927-1984) and Sewell Champe .

In 1961, he was appointed Stuart Distinguished Professor of Biophysics at Purdue University. In 1966 he worked in Roger Sperry 's research laboratory .

In 1967 he became professor in the Faculty of Biology at Caltech. From 1975 to 1992 he was James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology. After his retirement in 1992 he continued to work at the university until his death.

He died of a stroke .

Act

Benzer made his first important contributions in the field of semiconductor physics , where he succeeded in developing reliable rectifiers based on germanium , the leading semiconductor material at the time. B. found in radars application to produce. He showed that after adding traces of tin, the germanium crystals withstood the practically relevant voltages of> 100 V. He received several patents for this development, which were used in industrial practice after the war. The development of the first transistor by Walter Brattain , John Bardeen and William Bradford Shockley , which was later awarded the Nobel Prize , used the properties of germanium discovered by Benzer.

Benzer has been conducting research in the field of molecular biology since the 1950s and, with his research results, provided groundbreaking principles for the elucidation of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases . In genetics he coined the term cistron , the basis for the genetic code ( DNA ) developed by Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner .

For his genetic and neurophysiological studies on behavior mutants of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster , he was awarded around 40 prizes. He was a member of the French Académie des Sciences , the British Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences (1961), the American Philosophical Society (1962) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1959).

Honors and awards (selection)

literature

  • Yadin Dudai: Seymour Benzer (1921-2007). In: Neuron. Volume 57, 2008, pp. 24-26. PDF
  • Ralph J. Greenspan: Seymour Benzer 1921-2007 . In: National Academy of Sciences (Ed.): Biographical Memoirs . 2009 ( nasonline.org [PDF]). (Also published in: * Ralph J. Greenspan: Seymour Benzer 1921-2007 . In: Biogr. Mems Fell. R. Soc. Band 58 , 2012, p. 23-32 ( royalsocietypublishing.org [PDF]). )
  • William A Harris: Seymour Benzer 1921-2007 The Man Who Took Us from Genes to Behavior . In: PLOS Biology . February 12, 2008, doi : 10.1371 / journal.pbio.0060041 .
  • Frederic L. Holmes , William C. Summers: Reconceiving the gene: Seymour Benzer's adventures in phage genetics . Yale University Press, 2006, JSTOR : j.ctt1npmgk (table of contents with abstracts at JSTOR).
  • Yuh-Nung Jan and Lily Jan: Seymour Benzer (1921–2007). In: Science . Volume 319, No. 5859, 2008, p. 45, doi: 10.1126 / science.1154050 .
  • R. Jayaraman: Seymour Benzer and T4 rII . In: Resonance . No. 12 , 2008, p. 898-908 ( ias.ac.in [PDF]).
  • Jonathan Weiner : Time, love, memory. In search of the origins of behavior . Siedler, Berlin 2000. ISBN 3-88680-697-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mark A. Tanouye: Seymour Benzer from 1921 to 2007 . In: Nature Genetics . tape 40 , no. 2 , 2008, doi : 10.1038 / ng0208-121 , PMC 2655269 (free full text).
  2. ^ Ralph Bray: The Origin of Semiconductor Research at Purdue. purdue.edu, accessed on November 24, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Seymour Benzer, Canada Gairdner International Award 1964. Retrieved on November 24, 2018 .
  4. ^ Professor Seymour Benzer. In: Honorary Degrees, Purdue University. Retrieved November 24, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Seymour Benzer. National Science and Technology Medals Foundation, accessed November 24, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Seymour Benzer. Franklin Institute, accessed November 24, 2018 .
  7. ↑ 2004 Neuroscience Prize: Seymour Benzer. Gruber Foundation, accessed November 24, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Benzer, Seymour
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist and biologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 15, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 2007
Place of death Pasadena, California