Joshua Lederberg

Joshua Lederberg begins the three-part interview with a description of his parents, family background, and early years in New York. Lederberg knew from the second grade that he wanted to be a scientist, and he experimented at home with his own chemistry lab. Lederberg cites Albert Einstein as being a positive role model in his formative years. After completing grade school in 1936, he attended the Palestine Conference with his father in Washington, DC. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School at age fifteen. Due to age restrictions, Lederberg had to wait until he was sixteen before entering Columbia University. He spent the semester between high school and college at the American Institute of Science Laboratory. Then, he received his B.A. in biology from Columbia in 1944. While in college, Lederberg did original research with colchicine and worked with Francis Ryan on Neurospora and E. coli. At age seventeen, he enlisted with the U.S. Navy and was placed in the V-12 program, serving as a naval hospital corpsman. While working towards his Ph.D., Lederberg continued his research on bacteria and E. coli. After receiving his Ph.D. in microbiology from Yale University in 1947, he joined the University of Wisconsin as assistant professor of genetics, and he expanded the University's bacteriology research. There, Lederberg first worked on salmonella strains with his graduate students. While with the University of Wisconsin, Lederberg won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1958. Lederberg concludes the interview with a discussion of the University environment during the McCarthy era, reflections on his career decisions, and thoughts on chemical information science.

United States Navy

1943 - 1945 V-12 and Hospital Corps; Ens. USNR

Columbia University

1945 - 1946 Research Assistant, zoology

Yale University

1946 - 1947 Research Fellow, Jane Coffin Childs Fund for Medical Research

University of California, Berkeley

1950 - 1950 Visiting Professor of Bacteriology

University of Melbourne

1957 - 1957 Visiting Professor of Bacteriology

University of Wisconsin

1947 - 1950 Assistant Professor of Genetics

University of Wisconsin

1950 - 1954 Associate Professor of Genetics

University of Wisconsin

1954 - 1959 Professor of Genetics

University of Wisconsin

1957 - 1959 Chair, Department of Medical Genetics

Stanford University School of Medicine

1959 - 1978 Professor of Genetics (also Biology, Computer Science)

Stanford University School of Medicine

1959 - 1978 Chairman, Department of Genetics

The Rockefeller University

1978 - 1990 President

The Rockefeller University

1990 - 2008 University Professor Emeritus

James J. Bohning

James J. Bohning is professor emeritus of chemistry at Wilkes University, where he was a faculty member from 1959 to 1990. He served there as chemistry department chair from 1970 to 1986 and environmental science department chair from 1987 to 1990. Bohning was chair of the American Chemical Society’s Division of the History of Chemistry in 1986; he received the division’s Outstanding Paper Award in 1989 and has presented more than forty papers at national meetings of the society. Bohning was on the advisory committee of the society’s National Historic Chemical Landmarks Program from its inception in 1992 through 2001 and is currently a consultant to the committee. He developed the oral history program of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and he was the foundation’s director of oral history from 1990 to 1995. From 1995 to 1998, Bohning was a science writer for the News Service group of the American Chemical Society. He is currently a visiting research scientist and CESAR Fellow at Lehigh University. In May 2005, he received the Joseph Priestley Service Award from the Susquehanna Valley Section of the American Chemical Society.