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Friedrich Miescher
At the University of Tübingen, Miescher discovered nucleic acids while experimenting on the white blood cells in pus. -
Oswald Avery
In 1907 Avery started his study by working on many strains of bacteria by applying different immunological and chemical methods. He wrote a study on tuberculosis bacterium, and did his Pneumococcus work at the Rockefeller Institute Hospital. He also theorized that genes were made up of bacteria. -
Frederick Griffith
At the Pathological library for the ministry of Health, Griffith experimented with bacteria and was the first to reveal the “transforming principle,” which led to the discovery that DNA acts as the carrier of genetic information. He used two strains of the bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae (one strain lethal to mice and one harmless) in order to perform his experiments. -
Erwin Chargaff
In 1949, Chargaff discovered that the proportions of bases in DNA depended on the species the DNA came from. He also discovered that in DNA from any source the amount of T was equal to A. Also, the amount of C was equal to G. Chargaff came to these conclusions through the use of partition chromatography to separate the DNA and UV spectroscopy to analyze the DNA. -
Alfred Hershey & Martha Chase
At Carnegie Institute of Washington, Hershey and Chase performed a series of experiments that confirmed that genetic material was made of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. They did this through performing experiments on viruses that infect bacteria. Hershey won a nobel prize in 1969 but Chase did not. -
James Watson & Francis Crick
Watson and Crick used Rosalind Franklin's image of DNA to construct a model to determine the molecular structure of DNA. They both won a nobel prize in 1962. -
Rosalind Franklin
Franklin used x-ray diffraction methods to photograph DNA. This photo helped Watson and Crick construct their model of DNA. -
Matthew Meselson & Franklin Stahl
Meselson and Stahl experimented on bacteria cultured in a nutrient containing a heavy isotope of nitrogen, discovered the mode of replication of DNA, and determined that DNA replication was semiconservative. -
Ian Wilmut
Wilmut was a British developmental biologist who was the first to clone a Finn Dorset sheep named Dolly. He started with cultured embryonic cells that were nine days old and eventually used nuclear transfer of differentiated adult cells to create the clone. -
Craig Venter
Venter mapped the human genome through the use of the clone-by-clone method and eventually published the genome. He never won a nobel prize.
