Robert Briggs (December 10, 1911 — March 4, 1983) was a scientist who, in 1952, together with Thomas Joseph King,

cloned Cloning is the process of producing individual organisms with identical genomes, either by natural or artificial means. In nature, some organisms produce clones through asexual reproduction; this reproduction of an organism by itself without ...

frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely semiaquatic group of short-bodied, tailless amphibian vertebrates composing the order (biology), order Anura (coming from the Ancient Greek , literally 'without tail'). Frog species with rough ski ...

by nuclear transfer of embryonic cells. The same technique, using somatic cells, was later used to create

Dolly the Sheep Dolly (5 July 1996 – 14 February 2003) was a female Finn-Dorset sheep and the first mammal that was cloned from an adult somatic cell. She was cloned by associates of the Roslin Institute in Scotland, using the process of nuclear trans ...

. Their experiment was the first successful nuclear transplantation performed in

metazoan Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia (). With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes and are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a ho ...

s. He was a scientist at the Institute for Cancer Research of the Lankenau Hospital Research Institute (now known as the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research) when the work was conducted.

Background

Upon the death of his mother when he was two years old, Briggs was raised by his grandparents in Epping, New Hampshire. Inspired by a high school science teacher, Briggs became interested in the biological sciences. However, he began Boston University in the business school, concerned with earning a living during the Depression. Business courses couldn’t maintain his interest and he turned to the sciences. He graduated from Boston University in 1934 with a BS degree and enrolled at Harvard for graduate study. He earned a PhD degree in 1938 while studying metabolism in frog embryos. For four years, he served as a fellow in the Department of Zoology at McGill University where he studied tumors in frogs. In 1942, he joined the Lankenau Hospital Research Institute (now the

Fox Chase Cancer Center Fox Chase Cancer Center is a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center research facility and hospital located in the Fox Chase section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The main facilities of the center are l ...

) in Philadelphia. He worked on amphibian embryos for the rest of his life.

References

External links

National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs
American medical researchers 1911 births 1983 deaths Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Boston University alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fox Chase Cancer Center people {{US-scientist-stub