Oswald Avery

Oswald Avery JR.
FRS[2]
Oswald Avery Jr. in 1937
Born(1877-10-21)October 21, 1877
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada[3]
DiedFebruary 20, 1955(1955-02-20) (aged 77)
Nashville, Tennessee, US[3]
NationalityCanadian-American
Alma materColumbia University
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsMolecular biology[1]
InstitutionsRockefeller University Hospital

Oswald Theodore Avery Jr. (October 21, 1877 – February 20, 1955) was a Canadian-American physician and medical researcher. The major part of his career was spent at the Rockefeller Hospital in New York City. Avery was one of the first molecular biologists and a pioneer in immunochemistry, but he is best known for the experiment (published in 1944 with his co-workers Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty) that isolated DNA as the material of which genes and chromosomes are made.[4][5][6]

The Nobel laureate Arne Tiselius said that Avery was the most deserving scientist not to receive the Nobel Prize for his work,[7] though he was nominated for the award throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.[8][9]

The lunar crater Avery was named in his honor.

  1. ^ Barciszewski, J. (1995). "Pioneers in molecular biology: Emil Fischer, Erwin Schrodinger and Oswald T. Avery". Postepy Biochemii. 41 (1): 4–6. PMID 7777433.
  2. ^ Dubos, R. J. (1956). "Oswald Theodore Avery 1877–1955". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 2: 35–48. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1956.0003. JSTOR 769474.
  3. ^ a b "The Oswald T. Avery Collection. Biographical Information". Profiles in Science. US National Library of Medicine (NIH). Retrieved 18 May 2018.
  4. ^ Hotchkiss, R. D. (1965). "Oswald T. Avery: 1877–1955". Genetics. 51: 1–10. PMID 14258070.
  5. ^ "Oswald Theodore Avery, 1877–1955". Journal of General Microbiology. 17 (3): 539–549. 1957. doi:10.1099/00221287-17-3-539. PMID 13491790.
  6. ^ Dochez, A. R. (1955). "Oswald Theodore Avery, 1877–1955". Transactions of the Association of American Physicians. 68: 7–8. PMID 13299298.
  7. ^ Judson, Horace (2003-10-20). "No Nobel Prize for Whining". The New York Times. Retrieved 2020-11-22.
  8. ^ Erica Westly (October 6, 2008). "No Nobel for You: Top 10 Nobel Snubs". Scientific American.
  9. ^ Reichard, P. (2002). "Osvald T. Avery and the Nobel Prize in Medicine" (PDF). Journal of Biological Chemistry. 277 (16): 13355–13362. doi:10.1074/jbc.R200002200. PMID 11872756. S2CID 29494719.