Joshua Lederberg

(1925- )

Joshua Lederberg was born in 1925 in Montclair, NJ. A geneticist, he shared the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum for landmark work in microbial genetics. His co-discovery that bacteria exchange genetic materials established for the first time that such microorganisms can reproduce sexually. He became director of the Kennedy Laboratories for Molecular Biology and Medicine in 1961.