Biochemist and crystallographer Nadrian “Ned” Seeman died in New York City at the age of 75 on November 16. Seeman is best known for inventing self-assembling DNA structures, which launched the field of DNA nanotechnology.
Born in Chicago in 1945, Seeman was an only child whose father was a salesman and whose mother took a hiatus from teaching elementary school to take care of her own mother, who lived with them. Nature reports that Seeman developed a love of science because of his high school biology teacher. He studied biochemistry at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1966.
Seeman stayed in Chicago as he started graduate school, but then transferred to his mother’s hometown to attend the University of Pittsburgh, where he graduated with a PhD in crystallography in 1970. His first postdoc was a two-year stint at Columbia University. That was followed by five years at MIT in the ...
