William L. Russell

William Lawson Russell (born August 19, 1910 in Newhaven , England - † July 23, 2003 ) was an American geneticist and radiation biologist . Russell was a pioneer in determining the effects of radiation on mammals and thus also on humans, after Drosophila in particular had previously served as a study object. The studies on mice also formed a basis for setting standards for radiation doses in humans.

William Russell was a student of the population geneticist Sewall Wright . He came to the USA from England in 1932 and received his doctorate from the University of Chicago . In 1947 Russell came to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory , where he set up, on the initiative of the director of the biology department, Alexander Hollaender , a laboratory for studying the effects of radiation on mammals (with mice as test objects). He stayed at the Oak Ridge Laboratory until 1977. He used the specific-locus method he had developed . He worked closely with his wife, Liane (Lee) Russell, and the lab came to be known as the Mouse House . It was named after the Russells in 2001.

In 1965 he became president of the Genetics Society of America . In 1973 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences . In 1976 he received the Enrico Fermi Prize and in 1973 the X-ray plaque .

In 1937 he married Elizabeth S. Russell (1913-2001, nee Shull), who was also an important geneticist. They had four children and the couple divorced in 1947. She worked mainly at the Roscoe B. Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, where she bred special mouse lines (JAX Mice). She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and President of the Genetics Society of America in 1975/76.

He later married the geneticist Liane B. Russell , with whom he had two children.

literature

• John S. Wassom, K Sankaranarayanan: The life and scientific legacy of William L. Russell (1910-2003), Mutation Research / Fundamental and Molecular Mechanisms of Mutagenesis, Volume 546, 2004, pp. 1-9, online

Web links

• William L. Russell, 92, Radiation Pioneer, New York Times obituary, July 25, 2003