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LEOE RBERG, JOSHUA In 1959 Lederberg moved to Stanford Univer­ sity as the chair ofgenetics and expanded his inter­ ests into the application ofcomp uters to biological (1925- 2008), Nobel laureate geneticist and mi­ pro blems including artificial intelligence, struc­ crobiologist.Joshua Lederberg was born 23 May tural chemistry, and information management. 1925, in Montclair, New Jersey, one of three sons He developed a "dendritic algori thm," dub bed of Zvi and Esther Lederberg. A 1941 graduate of DENDRAL, which is regarded as a significant Stuyvesant High School in New York City, he en­ contribution in computer science. His interests tered Columbia University at age 16 and joined encompassed the challenges ofspace biology and the accelerated wartime Navy V-12 program. In he coined the term "exobiology" for this new field. 1944 he received a BA in zoology and started Lederberg assumed the presidency of the medical school at Columbia. Rockefeller University in 1978, a position that al­ In response to the seminal publication by lowed him a platform as a spokesperson for sci­ Avery, McCarty, and McLeod (1944) on DNA­ ence and public policy. He retired in 1990, but medicated transformat ion in pneumococcus, Led­ continued as one of the nation's most visible and erberg and his mentor, Francis]. Ryan, who was a respected public intellectuals in science. prominent biochemist, attempted to demo nstrate this phenomenon in Neurospora. Lederberg soon [See alsoArtificial Intelligence; Biological Sci­ turned his attention to sexual phases of bacteria ences; Computer Science; Genetics and Ge­ and isolated mutants of Escherichia coli to study netic Engineerin g; Germ Theory of Disease; possible recombination events. Edward Tatum Medicine; NobelPrize in BiomedicalResearch; had a collection of mutants of E. coli and Leder­ Space Science; and Zoology.] berg proposed a collaboration to study possible genetic recombination in that organism. Within six weeks of joining Tatum at Yale in early 1946, BIBLIOGRAP HY Lederberg had obtained evidence of recombina ­ Bradley, S. Gaylen."Joshua Lederberg, 1925-2008." tion in Tatum's E. coli K12 strain. This discovery In Biographical Memoirs. Washington, nc.: resulted largely from his lucky choice of one of National Academy of Sciences , 2009. the rare, recombination proficient strains ofE. coli. Strick,James E. "Creating a Cosmic Discipline: The By the fall of 1947 Lederberg was awarded a Crystallization and Consolidation of Exobi­ PhD from YaleUniversity and received an offer of ology, 1957-1973." Journal of the History of Bi­ a faculty position in the Department of Genetics ology37 (Spring 2004): 131-180. at the University of Wisconsin. Lederberg and his Wolfe, Audra J. "Germs in Space: Joshua Lederberg, wife, Esther Zinuner Lederberg, also a geneticist, Exobiology, and the Public Imagination, 1958­ spent the next 11 years in Madison, where they 1964." Isis 93 (june 2002) : 183-205. William C. Summers continued to explore the genetics ofbacteria and bacteriophages. He never returned to his medical studies. Lederberg received the Nobel Prize in Physi­ LEE, TSUNG-OAO ology or Medicine in 1958 for his work in bacterial genetics. He also made Significant contributions in computer science, artificial intelligence, and (Li Zhengdao in pinyin, 1926- ), a leading theo­ exobiology. Lederbergs broad interests, incisive retical physicist, aprominent Chinese American, min d, and openness to new ideas coupled with and one ofthe most influential scientists in U.S. a strong social conscience and unusual organiza­ and Chinese science and educational policy. tional skills all combined to make him a forceful Lee was born in Shanghai, China, to father Li spokesperson for science aswell as a leading public Junkang, a fertilizer factory manager, and mother intellectual. Zhang Mingzhang.He received primary education 628 • LEIDY, JOSEPH at home but was forced into exile inland during from particle physics to high-temp erature su­ a : the Japanese invasion in the 1940s. He studied perconductivity to dark energy. He also played an im physics at Zhejiang University for one year before active role in the development of the Relativ­ th enrolling in the Southwest Associated University istic Heavy-Ion Collider atthe BrookhavenNational br in Kunming in 1944. He did so well at Southwest Laboratory in Long Island that has produced im­ tic that even before graduation his professors selected portant discoveriessince its completion in 2000. hi him as part of a Chinese Nationalist government The reopening of US.-China relations in the U mission to the United States in 1946 to learn how early 1970s allowed Lee to return to China in h, to make an atomic bomb. 1972 for his first visit back. He has since devoted fe Because secrecy requirements made that mis­ much time and energy to US.-China scientific Pt sion impossible, Lee enrolled instead at the Uni­ collaboration, including th e creation of th e gc versity of Chicago, pursuing graduate studies in China-US. Physics Examination and Applica­ er physics with the eminent nuclear physicist Enrico tion program that brought approximately one Fermi.After receivinghis PhD, in late 1949, with a thousand Chinese physics graduate students H thesis on white dwarf stars, Lee spent several ("Lee scholars") to the United States. Lee also tl: months at Yerkes Observatory in southeastern played an active role in Chinese science and edu­ Wisconsin before taking up an assistant profes­ cation policy, especially in the introduction of sorship at the University of California, Berkeley, the postdoctoral system, the establishment of the where he married Jeanette Chin. A year later, he Chinese National Natural Science Foundation, moved to the Institute for Advanced Study at and the building of the Beijing Electron-Positron Princeton, New Jersey, before settling down two Collider. years later at Columbia University; he started as an assistant professor of physics in 1953 but was [See also Fermi, Enrico; Lee, Tsung-Dao; quickly promoted to full professor in 1956. Nobel Prize in Biomedical Research; Nuclear That same year Lee collaborated with Chen Weapons; Physics; and Yang, Chen Ning. ] Ning Yang, a fellow Chinese student at Chicago who was then a physicist at the Princeton insti­ r; tute, to formulate a theory that would mark a BIBLIOGRAPHY turning point in modern physics. Studying the tl Bern stein, Jeremy. A Comprehensible World. New behaviors of the so-called "strange particles;' they tl York: Rand om House, 1967. Contains a profile proposed that the long-accepted left-right parity t of Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang,"A Ques­ r broke down in a nuclear process called "weak tion of Parity;' first published in TIle New Yorker, c interactions:' The idea was met with strong resist­ 12 May 1962, pp. 49-103. a ance initially, but soon was confirmed by an Lee, T. D. T. D. Lee: Selected Papers, edited by G. experiment conducted by Chien Shiung Wu, Feinb erg. 3 vols. Boston: Birkhauser, 1986. Lee's Chinese American colleague at Columbia, Novick, Robert, ed. Thirty Years sinceParityNoncon­ j in collaboration with scientists at the Bureau of servation: ASymposium for T. D. Lee. Boston: Standards in Washington, nc. Lee and Yangwon Birkhauser, 1986. the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1957. ZuoyueWang Lee and Yangcontinued their fruitful partner­ ship on many important topics in physics, facili­ tated by Lee's spending two years from 1960 to 1962 at the Princeton institute. But the partn er­ LEI DY, JOSEPH ship ended in 1962 when personal friction, in part over credit for their joint scientific discoveries, reached a breaking point. Lee returned to Colum­ (1823- 1891), naturalist and polymath .Leidywas bia, where he remains a professor of physics, born, raised, and educated in Philadelphia, where conducting research on a wide range of areas he spent his entire professional career. Born into THE OXFORD EN CYCLOPEDIA OF THE HISTORY OF AM RICA SCIENCE, MEDICINE, AND TECHNOLOGY

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