Joshua Lederberg (1925–2008), Pioneer in Bacterial Genetics, Artificial Intelligence, and Space Exploration

TCE

The Chemical Educator

ISSN: 1430-4171 (electronic version)

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Abstract Volume 13 Issue 3 (2008) pp 179-185

Joshua Lederberg (1925–2008), Pioneer in Bacterial Genetics, Artificial Intelligence, and Space Exploration

Jean-Pierre Adloff and George B. Kauffman*

Honorary Professor, Université Louis Pasteur, 63 Rue Saint Urbain, Strasbourg, France F-67100, jp.adloff@noos.fr, Department of Chemistry, California State University, Fresno, Fresno, CA 93740-8034, georgek@csufresno.edu

Published online: 3 April 2008

Abstract. Joshua Lederberg (1925–2008), President Emeritus of the Rockefeller University and Chairman of The Ellison Medical Foundation Advisory Board, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958 for discovering that bacteria can mate and exchange genes, died of pneumonia on February 2, 2008 at the age of 82 in the New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City. This obituary-tribute briefly discusses his life, career, and scientific and social contributions with an emphasis on his Nobel Prize-winning work.

Key Words: Chemistry and History; obituary; biography; Nobel prize; medicine; physiology; biology; molecular biology; microbial genetics; artificial intelligence; space exploration; exobiology; computers.

(*) Corresponding author. (E-mail: georgek@csufresno.edu)

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