ABOVE: LIZA GREEN, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
Harvard Medical School molecular geneticist Philip Leder died last week (February 2). He was 85.
Leder was revered for his work in molecular biology, immunology, and cancer genetics. His first scientific breakthrough came in the 1960s when he was working as a postdoc in geneticist Marshall Nirenberg’s lab at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Together they developed a technique that confirmed that amino acids were encoded by a sequence of three nucleotides and revealed the triplet code of ambiguous amino acids.
From there, Leder went on to determine the first complete sequence of a mammalian gene, develop the first recombinant DNA vector system safe for use in the lab, identify the structure of genes that encode antibody molecules, discover a gene that caused cancer, and develop the first mouse model of cancer.
“Phil Leder was special. Among great scientists, he was special, and ...
