Leonard S. Lerman
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
June 17, 1925 - September 19, 2012
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Scientific Discipline: Genetics Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1986)
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Leonard S. Lerman revolutionized the way we analyze and manipulate DNA. He experimented with chemicals that would bind to DNA through intercalation. These chemicals insert themselves in DNA by unwinding the double helix structure and separating base pairs. The unwinding of the DNA can cause local changes in structure, inducing mutation. This research was essential to the development of the “triplet code” hypothesis, which states that it takes three nucleotides to code for a specific amino acid. Lerman’s work strongly influenced the development of DNA intercalators into antibiotics, antimalarial, and chemotherapeutic agents.
Lerman graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1945 and became a research assistant in the Explosive Research Laboratory at the Nation Defense Research Committee. He received his PhD in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology in 1950. After completing his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago in 1951, he began his long career as a professor of biophysics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, where he remained until 1965. In 1959 he went to Cambridge, England, to work in the lab of Sydney Brenner and Francis Crick where he conducted his research on intercalation. From 1965 to 1976 he was a professor of molecular biology at Vanderbilt University. In 1976 he chaired the department of biological sciences at State University of New York at Albany and later become a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
