The eclecticism that Abelson drew on as Science's editor showed itself long before he took that job. By the early 1950s, his career had already spanned several disciplines, including chemistry, physics, and molecular biology.
Abelson earned a Ph.D. in nuclear physics at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1939. He then joined the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C., as a physicist, but his work there was interrupted by World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Abelson served at the Naval Research Laboratory, where his work on the separation of uranium isotopes earned him the Navy's Distinguished Civilian Service Medal.
Upon his return to the Carnegie Institution in 1946, Abelson shifted his research to the emerging field of molecular biology and the development of radioactive tracers. "It was obvious that there were opportunities created by radioisotopes," recalls Abelson. "To the biologists and biochemists at that time, this was foreign terrain." His ...
