Vogt, Marguerite Maria

▪ 2008

      German-born American biologist

born 1913, Berlin, Ger.

died July 6, 2007, San Diego, Calif.

conducted research with 1975 Nobel Prize-winning scientist Renato Dulbecco, who pioneered the growing of animal viruses in culture in the 1950s and investigated how certain viruses gain control of the cells they infect. The pair showed that polyomavirus, which produces tumours in mice, inserts its DNA into the DNA of the host cell. Vogt earned a medical degree (1937) from the University of Berlin. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1950 to work with Dulbecco at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and in 1963 joined him in San Diego at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. While at Caltech they showed how the poliovirus forms plaques in cell cultures; this discovery contributed to the development of a polio vaccine. Vogt was a dedicated scientist and a mentor to legions of young scientists, including future Nobel laureates, but she herself won no professional awards for her work.

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