Daniel Nathans (October 30, 1928 – November 16, 1999) was an American

microbiologist A microbiologist (from Greek ) is a scientist who studies microscopic life forms and processes. This includes study of the growth, interactions and characteristics of microscopic organisms such as bacteria, algae, fungi, and some types of para ...

. He shared the 1978

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, accordi ...

for the discovery of

restriction enzymes A restriction enzyme, restriction endonuclease, REase, ENase or'' restrictase '' is an enzyme that cleaves DNA into fragments at or near specific recognition sites within molecules known as restriction sites. Restriction enzymes are one class ...

and their application in restriction mapping.

Early life and education

Nathans was born in Wilmington,

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent ...

, the last of nine children born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, Sarah (Levitan) and Samuel Nathans. During the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

his father lost his small business and was unemployed for a long time. Nathans attended public schools and then to the

University of Delaware The University of Delaware (colloquially UD or Delaware) is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. UD is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate's programs, 148 bachelor's programs, 121 ma ...

, where he received his BS degree in chemistry in 1950. He received his MD degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1954 and did a one-year internship at

Presbyterian Medical Center Penn Presbyterian Medical Center ("Presby") is a hospital located in the University City section of West Philadelphia. It was founded bReverend Ephraim D. Saundersin 1871 and formally joined the University of Pennsylvania Health System in 1995 ...

with Robert Loeb. Wanting a break before his medical residency, Nathans became a clinical associate at the

National Cancer Institute The National Cancer Institute (NCI) coordinates the United States National Cancer Program and is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is one of eleven agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. T ...

at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the lat ...

in Bethesda, Maryland. There he split his time between caring for patients receiving experimental cancer chemotherapy and research on recently discovered plasma-cell tumors in mice, similar to human multiple myeloma. Struck by how little was known about cancer biology, he became interested in protein synthesis in myeloma tumors, and published his first papers on this research. Nathans returned to

Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center The NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital is a nonprofit academic medical center in New York City affiliated with two Ivy League medical schools, Cornell University and Columbia University. The hospital comprises seven distinct campuses located in the New ...

for a two-year residency in 1957, again on Robert Loeb's service. He continued working on the problem of protein synthesis as time allowed. In 1959, he decided to work on the research full time and became a research associate at Fritz Lipmann's lab at the Rockefeller Institute in New York.

Career

In 1962, Nathans came to

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) is the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1893, the School of Medicine shares a campus with the Johns Hopkins Hospi ...

as an assistant professor of microbiology. He was promoted to associate professor in 1965 and to professor in 1967. He became the director of the microbiology department in 1972 and served in that position until 1982. In 1981, the department of microbiology was renamed the department of molecular biology and genetics. In 1982

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

made Nathans a University Professor, a position in which he served until his death in 1999. He also became a senior investigator of the

Howard Hughes Medical Institute The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, fi ...

unit at

in 1982. From 1995 to 1996, Nathans served as the interim president of

. In January 1999,

established the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, a multidisciplinary clinical and research center named for Nathans and pioneering medical geneticist

Victor McKusick Victor Almon McKusick (October 21, 1921 – July 22, 2008) was an American internist and medical geneticist, and Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. He was a proponent of the mapping of the human genome due to its ...

. Nathans was also given six honorary doctorates over the span of his career.

Awards

* 1967: Selman Waksman Award in Microbiology * 1976:

NAS Nas (born 1973) is the stage name of American rapper Nasir Jones. Nas, NaS, or NAS may also refer to: Aviation * Nasair, a low-cost airline carrier and subsidiary based in Eritrea * National Air Services, an airline in Saudi Arabia ** Nas Air ...

Award in Molecular Biology * 1977: Elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

* 1978:

* 1979: Elected to the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nat ...

* 1985: Elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

* 1993:

National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...

References

External links

*
The Daniel Nathans Papers
- Profiles in Science, National Library of Medicine * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nathans, Daniel 1928 births 1999 deaths Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine American Nobel laureates Nobel laureates affiliated with Missouri American microbiologists Jewish microbiologists Jewish American scientists Johns Hopkins University faculty National Medal of Science laureates Columbia University people People from Wilmington, Delaware Presidents of Johns Hopkins University Washington University School of Medicine alumni American people of Russian-Jewish descent University of Delaware alumni Howard Hughes Medical Investigators Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Members of the American Philosophical Society Washington University in St. Louis alumni Cornell University people

Early life and education

Career

Awards

See also

References

Further reading

External links