1925- . US geneticist who showed that
bacteria can reproduce sexually, combining
genetic material so that offspring possess
characteristics of both parent organisms.
Lederberg is considered a pioneer of genetic
engineering, a science that relies on the
possibility of artificially shuffling genes
from cell to cell. He realised that
bacteriophages, viruses which invade
bacteria, can transfer genes from one
bacterium to another, a discovery that led to
the deliberate insertion by scientists of
foreign genes into bacterial cells.