Nobel Prize

George Wells Beadle was born at Wahoo, Nebraska, U.S.A., October 22, 1903, the son of Chauncey Elmer Beadle, a farmer, and his wife Hattie Albro. George was educated at the Wahoo High School and might himself have become a farmer if one of his teachers at school had not directed his mind towards science and…

Edward Lawrie Tatum was born on December 14th, 1909, at Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A. He was the eldest son of Arthur Lawrie Tatum, Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, and Mabel Webb Tatum. After the death of his mother, his father married the former Celia Harriman. Tatum was educated at the University…

Joshua Lederberg was born in Montclair, N.J. on May 23, 1925. He was brought up in the Washington Heights District of Upper Manhattan, New York City, where he received his education in Public School 46, Junior High School 164 and Stuyvesant High School. From 1941 to 1944 he studied at Columbia College, where he obtained…

Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet was born at Traralgon, Victoria, Australia, on September 3rd, 1899. He is the son of the Manager of the branch of the Colonial Bank in that town. He was educated at the Victoria State Schools and at Geelong College, completing his medical course at the University of Melbourne, where he graduated…

Peter Brian Medawar was born on February 28, 1915, in Rio de Janeiro. He is the son of a business man who is a naturalized British subject, born in the Lebanon. Medawar was educated at Marlborough College, England, where he went in 1928. Leaving this College in 1932, he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, to…

François Jacob was born in June 1920 in Nancy (France). He was the only son of Simon Jacob and Thérèse Franck. After attending the Lycée Carnot in Paris, he began studying medicine at the Faculty of Paris, with the intention of becoming a surgeon. These studies were interrupted by the war. In June 1940, when…

André Michel Lwoff was born on 8 May 1902 in Ainay-le-Château (Allier). He joined the Institut Pasteur at the age of 19. He had graduated in science and had done one year of medicine. Lwoff completed his studies while working in the laboratory. In 1921, he had the good fortune to study under a very…

Jacques Lucien Monod was born in Paris on February 9th, 1910. In 1917 his parents settled in the South of France, where Monod spent his early years, and he therefore thinks of himself as a Southerner rather than as a Parisian. His father was a painter, something of an unusual vocation for a Huguenot family…

Alfred Day Hershey was born on December 4th, 1908, in Owosso, Michigan. He studied at the Michigan State College, where he obtained B.S. in 1930, and Ph.D. in 1934. In 1967 he got an honorary D.Sc. at the University of Chicago. From 1934 till 1950 he was engaged in teaching and research, at the Department…

Salvador Edward Luria was born on August 13th, 1912, in Torino, Italy. He has been a naturalized citizen of the U.S.A. since January 1947. In 1929 he started his studies in Medicine at the University of Torino, where he obtained his M. D. summa cum laude in 1935. From 1938 to 1940 he was Research…