Matthew Meselson

Matthew Stanley Meselson ( born May 24, 1930 in Denver, Colorado) is an American geneticist, biologist and chemist.

Life

Meselson studied chemistry at the University of Chicago and completed his studies at the California Institute of Technology ( CalTech ). He received his doctorate with a thesis on X-ray crystallography, a method to elucidate the spatial structure of molecules.

In 1954 he got a job at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. There also his collaboration with Franklin Stahl began. The two later developed a process which could be demonstrated that replication of deoxyribonucleic acid is semi conservative ( = semi - preserving ). This test is known as the Meselson -Stahl experiment.

Meselson 1963 was awarded the National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology, 1995 with the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal and 2004 with the Albert Lasker Special Achievement Award. In 1984 he was MacArthur Fellow.

Works

  • Chemicals and cancer. University Press, Boulder, Col. 1979
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