Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Categories: 1925 births | Artificial intelligence researchers | Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winners | Stuyvesant High School
Joshua Lederberg
Dr. Joshua Lederberg (born May 23, 1925) is a American molecular biologist who is known for his work in genetics, artificial intellegence, and space exploration. He was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in 1958 for his research in genetic structure and function in microorganisms. The other half of that year's prize was shared by Edward Lawrie Tatum and George Wells Beadle.
As a graduate student at Yale University, Lederberg and his mentor Tatum showed that the bacterium Escherichia coli could share genetic information through recombinant events. Lederberg went on to show in 1952 that bacteriophages could transfer genetic information between bacteria in Salmonella.
In addition to his contributions to biology, Lederberg did extensive research in artificial intelligence. This included work in the NASA experimental programs seeking life on Mars and the chemistry expert system DENDRAL .
Lederberg was born in Montclair, New Jersey and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City at the age of 16. He went on to receive his undergraduate degree from Columbia University in 1944. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1948 under the mentorship of Tatum. He then founded the Department of Medical Genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he was a professor until 1959. At that time, he moved to Stanford University where he was the founder and chairman of the Department of Genetics. In 1978, he became the president of Rockefeller University, until he stepped down in 1990 and became professor-emeritus of molecular genetics and informatics at Rockefeller.
Throughout his career, Lederberg was active as a scientific advisor to the U.S. government. Starting in 1950, he has been a member of various panels of the President's Science Advisory Committee. In 1979, he became a member of the U.S. Defense Science Board and the chairman of President Jimmy Carter's President's Cancer Panel. In 1994, he headed the Department of Defense's Task Force on Persian Gulf War Health Effects, which investigated Gulf War Syndrome.
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