George Wells Beadle

George Wells Beadle 1903-89, American geneticist, b. Wahoo, Nebr., grad. Univ. of Nebraska (B.S., 1926; M.S., 1927), Ph.D. Cornell, 1931. Beadle taught (1931-36) biology at the California Institute of Technology, where he also began genetic research on the fruit fly, Drosophila, in T. H. Morgan's laboratory. He was later chairman (1946-61) of the biology department there, and in 1961 he became chancellor of the Univ. of Chicago. Beadle shared with Joshua Lederberg and E. L. Tatum the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology for work with Tatum on the bread mold Neurospora crassa, which showed that genes control the cell's production of enzymes and thus the basic chemistry of the cell.

Bibliography: See G. Beadle and M. Beadle, The Language of Life (1966).

Beadle, George Wells (1903–89) US geneticist. During his study of mutations in bread mould (Neurospora crassa), Beadle and Edward Tatum found that genes are responsible for the synthesis of enzymes, and that these enzymes control each step of all biochemical reactions occurring in an organism. For this discovery they shared, with J. Lederberg, the 1958 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.