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Biologia e biochimica al Caltech


In 1946, Sturtevant and Linus Pauling (who was awarded Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, 1954, and Peace, 1962) persuaded Beadle, who was then Professor of Biology at Stanford University, to become chairman of the Biology Division. Beadle carried on the Morgan tradition of strongly supporting basic research and maintaining a stimulating intellectual atmosphere. During the early 1930s Beadle had been a National Research Fellow in the Division. He had collaborated with Sturtevant on a monumental study of inversions and together they wrote a textbook of genetics. He had collaborated also during that time with Sterling Emerson, and with E. G. Anderson. Beadle was clearly a part of the Morgan legacy.

George Wells Beadle 1958
Edward Lawrie Tatum
Joshua Lederberg
1/4 of the prize
1/4 of the prize
1/2 of the prize

Pauling returned to model-building and, while he was George Eastman visiting professor at Oxford in 1948, he worked out the a-helix rod-like conformation of polypeptide chains, with 3.7 peptide residues per turn of the helix. Each amide group is hydrogen bonded >C=O. . .H-N< to the third residue from it in each direction along the chain. On this return to Pasadena, Pauling worked out the details with Corey, and they devised additional stable polypeptide conformations. Pauling and Corey reported the -helix conformation in 1950, and the parallel and antiparallel -pleated sheet conformations of polypeptide chains in the following year.