Sol Spiegelman

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Sol Spiegelman in 1980.

Sol Spiegelman (born December 14, 1914 in Brooklyn , New York City, † January 20, 1983 in Columbia , Herkimer County , New York) was an American molecular biologist . He is best known for his research in genetics , virology and cancer .

life and career

Spiegelman studied mathematics at the College of the City of New York and graduated there in 1939. He then went to Columbia University and Washington University in St. Louis , Missouri, where he received his Ph.D. received his doctorate. From 1946 he worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , where he later worked for more than 20 years as a professor of microbiology. From 1969 he was Professor of Human Genetics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons , a graduate school at Columbia University, and Director of the Institute of Cancer Research.

Spiegelman was married with a daughter and two sons.

Scientific work areas and awards

Spiegelman discovered the fact that only one of the two strands that make up DNA encodes the genetic information that is transcribed into RNA . In 1962 he developed a technique for isolating RNA and DNA molecules from cells, known as hybridization .

In 1965 he discovered the monsters named after him : RNA molecules that are subject to chemical evolution and dynamically adapt to their environment. In 1965 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences , 1966 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Since 1969 he has mainly worked on the molecular basis of cancer, in particular on virus-induced tumors, leukemia and breast cancer. In 1971 he became a member of the Leopoldina . In 1974 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and in 1981 the international Antonio Feltrinelli Prize . Since 1975 he was a university professor.

literature

  • Excerpts from a 1983 New York Times obituary , online ( October 28, 2007 memento in the Internet Archive )
  • F. Oehlenschläger, M. Eigen : 30 years later - a new approach to Sol Spiegelman's and Leslie Orgel's in vitro evolutionary studies. Dedicated to Leslie Orgel on the occasion of his 70th birthday. In: Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere: the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life. Volume 27, Numbers 5-6, December 1997, pp. 437-457, PMID 9394469 .

Web links

Commons : Sol Spiegelman  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ S. Spiegelman, I. Haruna, IB Holland, G. Beaudreau, D. Mills: The synthesis of a self-propagating and infectious nucleic acid with a purified enzyme. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Volume 54, Number 3, September 1965, ISSN  0027-8424 , pp. 919-927, PMID 5217468 , PMC 219765 (free full text).
  2. ^ List of members Leopoldina, Sol Spiegelman