George Wells Beadle (1903 - 1989)

Born 22 Oct 1903 in Wahoo, Saunders, Nebraska, United States

Ancestors

Died 9 Jun 1989 at age 85 in Pomona, Los Angeles, California, United States

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Biography

George Beadle is Notable.

George Wells Beadle was born in Wahoo, Nebraska. He was the son of Chauncey Elmer Beadle and Hattie Albro. George was educated at the Wahoo High School and might himself have become a farmer if one of his teachers at school had not directed his mind towards science. In 1926 he took his Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Nebraska and subsequently worked for a year with Professor F.D. Keim, who was studying hybrid wheat. Professor Keim secured for him a post as Teaching Assistant at Cornell University, where he worked, until 1931, with Professors R.A. Emerson and L.W. Sharp on Mendelian asynapsis in Zea mays. For this work he obtained his Ph.D. in 1931.

Beadle was married twice. He married Marion C. Hill in 1928. By his first wife he had a son, David, who now lives at The Hague, the Netherlands. He married his second wife in 1953: Muriel McClure (1915-1994), a well-known writer, was born in California. Beadle's chief hobbies were rockclimbing, skiing, and gardening.

His New York Times obituary follows:

George W. Beadle, 85, Geneticist And Nobel Prize Winner, Is Dead

By GLENN FOWLER Published: June 12, 1989

George W. Beadle, a geneticist who won a Nobel Prize in 1958 for discoveries that contributed one of the basic concepts of modern genetics, died of Alzheimer's disease Friday at the Mount San Antonio Gardens retirement community in Pomona, Calif. He was 85 years old.

Dr. Beadle's Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology was awarded for his work in demonstrating how genes control the basic chemistry of the living cell. At the time he was chairman of the division of biology at the California Institute of Technology. He shared the prize with Edward L. Tatum of the Rockefeller Institute and Dr. Joshua Lederberg of the University of Wisconsin, who is currently president of Rockefeller University.

Less than three years after the Nobel award, Dr. Beadle became the seventh president of the University of Chicago, a position he held until 1968. He taught biology at the university while he was president and as an emeritus professor until 1975. He also conducted research that clarified the origins of domestic corn. In the course of this research, Dr. Beadle cultivated a field of corn wherever he was, including at the university campus among the streets on the South Side of Chicago.

Beadle and Tatum's key experiments involved exposing the bread mold Neurospora crassa to x-rays, causing mutations. In a series of experiments, they showed that these mutations caused changes in specific enzymes involved in metabolic pathways. These experiments, published in 1941, led them to propose a direct link between genes and enzymatic reactions, known as the "one gene, one enzyme" hypothesis.

Sources

• Wikipedia:George_Beadle
• https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1958/summary/
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/73617157/george-wells-beadle
• "United States Census, 1910," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MLH3-FH3 : accessed 6 February 2019), George Beadle in household of Chauncy E Beadle, Stocking, Saunders, Nebraska, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 154, sheet 4B, family 77, NARA microfilm publication T624 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1982), roll 855; FHL microfilm 1,374,868.
• "New York, County Marriages, 1847-1848; 1908-1936," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V6HJ-NV8 : 27 March 2019), George Wells Beadle, 18 Aug 1928, Tompkins, New York, United States; citing ref. ID , county clerk offices from various counties, New York; FHL microfilm 1,008,780.
• "United States Census, 1930," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X4LG-TTQ : accessed 27 March 2019), George W Beadle, Ithaca, Tompkins, New York, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) ED 27, sheet 13A, line 34, family 244, NARA microfilm publication T626 (Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002), roll 1654; FHL microfilm 2,341,388.
• "United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K9DT-XY9 : 15 March 2018), George W Beadle, Palo Alto, Palo Alto Judicial Township, Santa Clara, California, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 43-39, sheet 2B, line 44, family 39, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, NARA digital publication T627. Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790 - 2007, RG 29. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012, roll 336.
• "California Death Index, 1940-1997," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VGYB-XW7 : 26 November 2014), George Wells Beadle, 09 Jun 1989; Department of Public Health Services, Sacramento.