biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1918– )
|
| biography:
| Geneticist, born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, USA. After taking his PhD at the California Institute of Technology (1942), he joined the faculty there, becoming the Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Biology in 1966 (emeritus 1988). He held several concurrent posts including a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, a year at the School of Botany, Cambridge University (1948–9), and a membership on the National Advisory Committee on Radiation (1958–61). While still in high school he began his study of the genetics of the Mediterranean fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster). His discovery of the ‘control genes’ which convert a species' simple embryo into a complex organism (including humans) with its specialized body parts, earned him a share of the 1995 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. In addition to winning the major awards in his field, he was an accomplished flautist. |
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