Leslie Orgel
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
January 12, 1927 - October 27, 2007
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Scientific Discipline: Biochemistry Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1990)
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Leslie Orgel explored fundamental issues related to the origin of life on Earth. As an early observer of Watson and Crick’s model of the DNA double helix, he went beyond this discovery to theorize and test how such a complex molecule may have evolved spontaneously under prebiotic conditions, giving rise to elements of genetic replication that are known today.
Orgel’s career began in England, where he earned his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Oxford in 1948. His graduate studies were completed at Magdalen College in Oxford in 1953. Orgel came to the United States to complete postdoctoral fellowships at Caltech and the University of Chicago, and then he returned to England, joining the Department of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. In recognition of his early scientific brilliance, Orgel was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society at the age of 35.
Orgel began showing interest in biological research in the 1960s. He moved to California in 1965 to establish the Chemical Evolution Laboratory at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and he remained on the Salk Institute’s faculty for the rest of his career.
