Super-Important People in the History of Genetics

Real scientific work in the field of genetics began in earnest in the mid-1800s with the work of the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel who studied the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants. Since those humble beginnings, genetics has since become an integral branch of modern science. Many brilliant scientists were responsible for crucial developments made throughout the history of genetics. Yesterday in class, we went over some of the big names in the history of genetics. However, I am going to pick 5 of them to write about in this blog post:

James D. Watson and Francis Crick (count as 1 person)

Watson (Left) and Crick (right)

James Watson and Francis Crick were the two co discoverers of the structure of DNA. Working out of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in England, the pair managed to deduce the double helical structure of DNA. They published their results in Nature in April 1953, and subsequently won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine along with another scientist, Maurice Wilkins. However, it is interesting to note that Watson and Crick did not actually perform any significant experiments to determine the structure of DNA, but they merely collected experimental data from other scientists and reached their conclusion based on those data.

Rosalind Franklin

Franklin (Left) along with Watson and Crick

Rosalind Franklin was one of the key scientists from whom Watson and Crick took experimental data. In 1952, while Franklin was working at King's College London she took an X-ray diffraction image of a DNA molecule. This image was eventually used by Watson and Crick to determine the double helical structure of DNA. Unfortunately, Franklin did not receive a Nobel Prize for her work because she died of ovarian cancer soon after her work on DNA, likely due to her exposure to large amounts of x-ray radiation.

George Wells Beadle

George Wells Beadle

George Wells Beadle was an American geneticists who co-discovered that genes are involved in regulating biochemical processes within cells. Along with his lab partner Edward Tatum, they exposed bread mould to x-rays, causing mutations in the bread mould's DNA. They then observed that the mutations caused changes in specific enzymes involved in cell metabolism. The results of their experiments led Beadle and Tatum to propose the "one gene, one enzyme" hypothesis, which states that there is a direct connection between a cell's genes and the enzymes it produces. For their efforts, they were awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Hermann Joseph Muller

Hermann Joseph Muller

Whereas Beadle and Tatum used radiation to induce mutations in DNA to study their effects on cell enzymes, Hermann Joseph Muller was the scientist who, during the late 1920s, discovered that radiation, specifically x-ray radiation, was capable of causing mutations in a process called "x-ray mutagenesis". For his discovery, he was awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in Medicine. He was also a politically vocal scientist, warning people about the dangers of radiation exposure in humans and campaigning tirelessly against nuclear weapons.

Andrew Fire

Andrew Fire

Andrew Fire is one of the more contemporary scientist on this list. He is the co-discoverer of RNA interference, a process in which genes are silenced by short double-stranded RNA molecules in a cell's cytoplasm. He published his research in Nature in 1998. He won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Medicine along with his colleague Craig Mello.