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Esther Miriam Zimmer Lederberg (December 18, 1922 – November 11, 2006) was an American microbiologist and a pioneer of bacterial genetics. Notable contributions include the discovery of the bacterial virus λ, the transfer of genes between bacteria by specialized transduction, the development of replica plating, and the discovery of the bacterial fertility factor F. Lederberg also founded and directed the now defunct Plasmid Reference Center at Stanford University, where she maintained, named, and distributed plasmids of many types, including those coding for antibiotic resistance, heavy metal resistance, virulence, conjugation, colicins, transposons, and other unknown factors. ==Early years== Esther Miriam Zimmer was the first of two children born in the Bronx, New York, to David Zimmer and Pauline Geller Zimmer. Her brother, Benjamin Zimmer, followed in 1923. A child of the Great Depression, her lunch was often a piece of bread topped by the juice of a squeezed tomato.〔("Esther Lederberg Memorial Web Site: Anecdote #5" )〕 Zimmer thrived academically. She attended Evander Childs High School in the Bronx, receiving honors for French and graduating at the age of 16. As an undergraduate, Zimmer worked at the New York Botanical Garden, engaging in research on ''Neurospora crassa'' with Bernard Ogilvie Dodge.〔("Esther Lederberg Memorial Web Site: Anecdote #3" )〕 She received an A.B. at New York City’s Hunter College, graduating cum laude in 1942, at the age of 20. After her graduation from Hunter, Zimmer went to work as a research assistant to Alexander Hollaender at the Carnegie Institution of Washington (later Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), where she continued to work with ''N. crassa'' as well as publishing her first work in genetics.〔Hollaender, A., Sansome E.R., Zimmer, E., and Demerec, M. (April 1945) "Quantitative irradiation experiments with ''Neurospora crassa''. II. Ultraviolet irradiation", ''American Journal of Botany'' 32(4):226-235〕 In 1944 she won a fellowship to Stanford University, working as an assistant to George Wells Beadle. She traveled west to California, and after a summer studying at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station under Cornelius Van Niel, she entered a master’s program in genetics. While at Stanford she worked with Edward Tatum of Yale on bacterial genetics.〔("Edward Tatum's Nobel Prize lecture" )〕 Stanford awarded her a Master of Arts in 1946. She married Joshua Lederberg on December 13, 1946, after which she began work on her doctorate at the University of Wisconsin. Her thesis was "Genetic control of mutability in the bacterium ''Escherichia coli''." Joshua Lederberg accepted a position there as Associate Professor. She completed her doctorate under the sponsorship of R. A. Brink, in 1950, the same year that she discovered the lysogenicity of lambda bacteriophage (see below). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Esther Lederberg」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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