1955 - Science

Science

Physicist Emilio Segrè and his colleague Owen Chamberlain use the new bevatron particle accelerator at the University of California, Berkeley, to produce and identify antiprotons, thereby laying the foundation for the discovery of other antiparticles (see Gell-Mann, 1953).

English biochemist Frederick Sanger at Cambridge announces that he has determined the total structure of the insulin molecule (see 1945; Watson, Crick, 1953). Now 37, Sanger has taken the molecule apart one amino acid at a time, examining the stain left by each amino acid and then using paper chromatography to strain the amino acid through a paper filter (see Khorana, 1966).

Spanish-born New York University biochemist Severo Ochoa, 49, announces the synthesis of ribonucleic acid (RNA), a basic constituent of all living tissues. It is a giant step toward the creation of life in the laboratory out of inert materials (see Watson, Crick, 1953; Fraenkel-Conrat, 1957; Stahl, Meselson, 1958).

New York-born Purdue University physicist-turned-molecular biologist Seymour Benzer, 33, devises a method for determining the detailed structure of viral genes and coins the term cistron to denote a functional subunit of a gene.

Bacteriologist Oswald Avery dies at Nashville, Tenn., February 20 at age 77; physicist Albert Einstein of a ruptured aorta at Princeton, N.J., April 18 at age 76; biochemist James B. Sumner of cancer at Buffalo, N.Y., August 12 at age 67; mathematician Hermann Weyl at Zürich December 8 at age 70, having retired earlier in the year from Princeton's Institute of Advanced Study.