1901 2010
Prize category:
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The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1958
George Beadle, Edward Tatum, Joshua Lederberg
Biography
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 his B.A. with honours in Zoology
(premedical course), and from 1944 to 1946 at the College of
Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University Medical
School. Here he carried out part-time research with Professor
F.J. Ryan in the Department of Zoology. Subsequently he went to
the Department of Microbiology and Botany at Yale University, New
Haven, Conn., as Research Fellow of the Jane Coffin Childs Fund
for Medical Research and, during 1946-1947, as a graduate student
with Professor E.L. Tatum. He was
awarded his Ph.D. degree in 1948.
In 1947, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Genetics at the
University of
Wisconsin, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in
1950 and Professor in 1954. He organized the Department of
Medical Genetics in 1957, of which he was Chairman during
1957-1958.
Stanford University Medical School entrusted to him
the organization of its Department of Genetics and appointed him
Professor and Executive Head in 1959. Since 1962, he has been
Director of the Kennedy Laboratories for Molecular
Medicine.
Lederberg was Visiting Professor of Bacteriology at the University of
California, Berkeley, in 1950; and Fulbright Visiting
Professor of Bacteriology at Melbourne University, Australia, in 1957. In
the latter year, he was also elected to the National Academy of Sciences (USA).
While at Yale, Lederberg married Esther M. Zimmer in 1946. They
have no children. Mrs. Lederberg had obtained her M.A. at
Stanford with Professor G.W. Beadle
during 1944-1946, and her Ph.D. degree at the University of
Wisconsin in 1950. She is working full time as research
associate.
From Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1942-1962, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1958
Addendum, December 1997
Joshua Lederberg was born in Montclair NJ,
near New York, the son of Rabbi Zwi H. and Esther Lederberg, recently emigrated
from Israel, on May 23 1925. He was educated in New York. After a period of
study at Columbia P&S
medical school, where he began his life-long research in
molecular biology, he received his Ph.D. in microbiology at Yale.
Then he served as professor of genetics at the University of
Wisconsin, then at Stanford School of Medicine, before coming to
the Rockefeller in 1978. His life long research, for
which he received the Nobel Prize in
1958 (at the age of 33), has been in genetic structure and
function in microorganisms. He has been actively involved in
artificial intelligence research (in computer science) and in the
NASA
experimental programs seeking life on Mars. He has also been a
consultant on health-related matters for government and the
international community, e.g. having had long service on WHO's Advisory Health
Research Council. He received the US National Medal of Science in
1989, where his consultative role was specifically cited. He has
been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1957, and
a charter member of its Institute of Medicine, has served as
Chairman of the President's Cancer Panel, and of the Congress'
Technology Assessment Advisory Council, as well as on numerous
other consultative panels.
From 1978 to 1990, he served as president of the Rockefeller
University. He continues his research activities there in the
field of interactions of gene functionality and mutagenesis in
bacteria. His current station there is Sackler Foundation scholar
and professor-emeritus of molecular genetics and
informatics.
His wife Marguerite Stein Lederberg was born in Paris, was
educated as a physician in the U.S. and now serves as Clinical
Professor of Psychiatry at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
in New York. They have two children, David Kirsch and Anne
Lederberg.
Addendum, June 2005
Please consult http://profiles.NLM.nih.gov/BB for extensive archival and biographical detail. The focus of my research has shifted to "What is the fastest rate possible for the growth of a bacterial cell, (and why?)".
Joshua Lederberg died on February 2, 2008.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 2005
MLA style: "Joshua Lederberg - Biography". Nobelprize.org. 28 Jun 2011 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1958/lederberg-bio.html