• Es­ther Leder­berg, Pi­o­neer of Bac­te­r­ial Ge­net­ics

    by Mercè Pi­queras — "She did pi­o­neer­ing work in ge­net­ics, but it was her hus­band who won a No­bel price." So said an obit­u­ary in the British news­pa­per 'The Guardian' re­gard­ing Es­ther Leder­berg, a North Amer­i­can mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gist mar­ried to Joshua Leder­berg from 1946 to 1966. Be­ing mar­ried to and work­ing along such a phe­nom­e­nal…

  • Good Old Days #2

    by R.G. E. Mur­ray — There is much that should be re­mem­bered about those days of in­ten­sive ex­ploratory work and much of it us­ing very sim­ple meth­ods and in­stru­ments. There was a re­mark­able amount of shar­ing of cur­rent work and re­sults with­out much con­cern for pri­macy, which was au­to­mat­i­cally rec­og­nized. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion was of­ten by hand…