Alfred Hershey: 12/4/1908 - 5/22/1997 Alfred Hershey was born in Owosso Michigan on December 4, 1908. Studying bacteriology at Michigan State College, he graduated in 1930 with a B.S. and attained a Ph.D. by 1934. After teaching for several years at the Washington University School of Medicine, Hershey went on to be awarded a D.Sc, the Kimber Genetics Award of the National Academy of Sciences, an M.D.h.c., and eventually a Nobel Prize along with Max Delbrück and Salvador E. Luria "for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses".
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Martha Chase: 11/30/1927 - 8/8/2003 Martha Chase was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1927. In 1950 Chase received a bachelor's degree from the College of Wooster and in 1964 a doctoral degree from the University of Southern California. Chase began working as Hershey's assistant at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where they conducted their famous experiment, revealing that DNA contains genetic material. Although it was unusual for an assistant's name to be included in a publication int he 1950's, Chase was mentioned and has since then been known as an iconic and revolutionary scientist in the Race for DNA.
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The race for dna Several researchers over the 1900s struggled to determine what makes up life. However, experimentation and data analysis by many scientists revolutionized what we currently know about DNA and its structure. All around the same time period many scientists and partnerships of scientists were racing to be the first to discover the structure and function of DNA, ultimately becoming known for their acclaimed experiments.
Chargaff, for example, discovered that DNA of different species varies and that all DNA consists of base pairs of adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. Meanwhile Watson and Crick were able to use x-ray crystallography and Chargaff, Wilkins, and other scientists' findings to determine DNA structure. If it weren't for all of these renound scientists, our understanding of DNA today could be completely different. Click here to read more about the discovery of DNA. |