Word: biologist
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Inspired by these experiments, Watson, then a young Ph.D. in biology from Indiana University, decided to take a crack at the complex structure of DNA itself. The same thought struck Crick, a physicist turned biologist who was preparing for his doctorate at Cambridge. Neither man was particularly well equipped to undertake so formidable a task. Watson was deficient in chemistry, crystallography and mathematics. Crick, on the other hand, was almost totally ignorant of genetics. But together, in less than two years of work at Cambridge, these two spirited young scientists showed how it is possible to win a Nobel Prize...
...called lefthanded or "Z" DNA, which twists bafflingly in the direction opposite that of a normal molecule; Rich indicated that this seeming oddity may play a significant role in switching genes off or on, thereby allowing a cell to develop into one that is different from its neighbor. Biologist Mark Ptashne of Harvard discussed the activity of small proteins that somehow attach themselves to the coils of DNA and control how the molecule replicates. Nobel Laureates David Baltimore of M.I.T. and Howard Temin of the University of Wisconsin reported on the use of viruses, which are little more than coils...
...cancer in normal cells. Teams at M.i.T. and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y., reported that they could induce cancer in normal rat cells only by inserting at least two types of oncogenes into the cells. "A single oncogene produced some changes, but not cancer," explained Molecular Biologist Robert Weinberg of M.I.T. "It took two genes acting cooperatively to produce a tumor. In other cases, it might take three or more...
...Biologist Michael Ghiselin: $212,000 in 1981. A specialist in evolutionary biology and author of the acclaimed The Triumph of the Darwinian Method (1969), Ghiselin had resigned from the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley to devote more time to writing and research even before receiving his award. Says he: "I sold my house and was living in draconian parsimony. This award gave me the resources for going places and doing research. I was upset by the award at first-it was hard to deal with after coping with adversity for so many years. But I have...
...Just a few years ago, in an excess of hubris, I predicted we were nearly finished with the problem of infection," Dr. Lewis Thomas, noted biologist and prize-winning author (The Lives of a Cell), observed recently. "I take it back." Through the heroic struggle of medical sleuths, most diseases faced today can be controlled, as some day AIDS will be. But microbes, which have existed on this planet far longer than man, show no signs of being unconditionally conquered. Amid the billions that exist harmoniously around us, there will always be some that become unexpectedly disruptive, mysteriously virulent. Said...