Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Stanford University Memorial at Clark Walk
Elaboration by Stan Falkow
July 26, 2010
Joshua and Esther Lederberg established their own group
and worked on bacterial genetics. Studying with Edward
Tatum, they discovered sex, or genetic exchange in bacteria,
which won him the Nobel Prize shortly after he arrived at
Stanford. The process they developed became a way to transfer
genetic information between bacteria. Len Herzenberg
Esther Lederberg developed a method of replica plating using velveteen
attached to a piston ring. The rings are pressed onto bacterial colonies
and then stamped onto a series of plates. She advanced many of the
early lab procedures and also discovered lambda phage, which became a
widely used tool in microbial genetics. Stanley Falkow
Elaboration by Stanley Falkow (personal communication to Matthew Simon, 7/26/2010)
"My objective view is that Esther and Josh worked as a team for many years.
Josh, as I said at a symposium at the National Academy of Sciences in 2008,
was not in my view a gifted experimentalist. Esther was. Josh had a lot of
ideas but the ideas had to be proved by experiments. Esther and Norton
Zinder supplied most of the actual experiments and in a number of cases
their experimental observations led to their own ideas and extension of the
facts and their own discoveries. The distinction between bacterial mating
and a fertility factor is quite real and I agree with Herzernberg's
statement you cite. As an aside, at the same National
Academy Symposium which was dedicated to Josh's memory by the organizers,
several speakers as well as Stanley Cohen and me pointed out Esther's
contributions to the field."
The memorial to Esther Lederberg above points out some of Esther's
major accomplishments. However, other major accomplishments have
been omitted, including the discovery and naming of the
Fertility Factor "F",
Esther's extensive research of
galactosemia
using lambda mutants, Esther's research of
maltophilia
, and research on specialized transduction
with M. Laurance Morse.
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