Beadle, George Wells

born Oct. 22, 1903, Wahoo, Neb., U.S.

died June 9, 1989, Pomona, Calif.

U.S. geneticist.

He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University. While studying Drosophila, he realized that genes must influence heredity chemically and designed a complex technique to determine the nature of those effects, showing that something as apparently simple as eye colour results from a long series of chemical reactions, which are affected by genes. With Edward L. Tatum, he found that the total environment of a bread mold could be varied so that researchers could locate and identify mutations relatively easily, concluding that each gene determines the structure of a specific enzyme, which in turn allows a single chemical reaction to proceed. For the "one gene, one enzyme" concept, they shared a 1958 Nobel Prize with Joshua Lederberg. Beadle later served as president of the University of Chicago (1960–68).

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▪ American geneticist

born Oct. 22, 1903, Wahoo, Neb., U.S.

died June 9, 1989, Pomona, Calif.

 American geneticist who helped found biochemical genetics when he showed that genes affect heredity by determining enzyme structure. He shared the 1958 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum (Tatum, Edward L.) and Joshua Lederberg (Lederberg, Joshua).

      After earning his doctorate in genetics from Cornell University (1931), Beadle went to the laboratory of Thomas Hunt Morgan at the California Institute of Technology, where he did work on the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Beadle soon realized that genes (gene) must influence heredity chemically.

      In 1935, with Boris Ephrussi at the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique in Paris, he designed a complex technique to determine the nature of these chemical effects in Drosophila. Their results indicated that something as apparently simple as eye colour is the product of a long series of chemical reactions and that genes somehow affect these reactions.

      After a year at Harvard University, Beadle pursued gene action in detail at Stanford University in 1937. Working there with Tatum, he found that the total environment of a red bread mold, Neurospora, could be varied in such a way that the researchers could locate and identify genetic changes, or mutants, with comparative ease. They exposed the mold to X rays and studied the altered nutritional requirements of the mutants thus produced. These experiments enabled them to conclude that each gene determined the structure of a specific enzyme that, in turn, allowed a single chemical reaction to proceed. This “one gene–one enzyme” concept won Beadle and Tatum (with Lederberg) the Nobel Prize in 1958.

      In addition, the use of genetics to study the biochemistry of microorganisms, outlined in the landmark paper “Genetic Control of Biochemical Reactions in Neurospora” (1941), by Beadle and Tatum, opened up a new field of research with far-reaching implications. Their methods immediately revolutionized the manufacture of penicillin and provided insights into many biochemical processes.

      In 1946 Beadle became professor and chairman of the biology division at the California Institute of Technology and served there until 1960, when he was invited to succeed R. Wendel Harrison as chancellor of the University of Chicago; the title of president was reassigned to the position a year later. He retired from the university to direct (1968–70) the American Medical Association's Institute for Biomedical Research.

      His major works include An Introduction to Genetics (1939; with A.H. Sturtevant), Genetics and Modern Biology (1963), and The Language of Life (1966; with Muriel M. Beadle).

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