Esther Lederberg

Esther Lederberg
Born in 1922 in the Bronx, Esther Lederberg would grow up to lay the groundwork for future discoveries on genetic inheritance in bacteria, gene regulation, and genetic recombination.
A microbiologist, she is perhaps best known for discovering a virus that infects bacteria— called the lambda bacteriophage—in 1951, while at the University of Wisconsin.

Lederberg, along with her first husband Joshua Lederberg, also developed a way to easily transfer bacterial colonies from one petri dish to another, called replica plating, which enabled the study of antibiotic resistance. The Lederberg method is still in use today.
Joshua Lederberg's work on replica plating played a part in his 1958 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine, which he shared with George Beadle and Edward Tatum.
She died 11 November 2006 at Stanford Hospital of pneumonia and congestive heart failure.

Know more:
http://www.estherlederberg.com/home.html
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2006/november29/med-esther-112906.html

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