Year

Scientist(s)

Discovery
Joint announcement of the theory of natural selection-that
Charles Darwin Alfred
1858
members of a population who are better adapted to the
Russel Wallace
environment survive and pass on their traits.
1859 Charles Darwin
Published The Origin of Species.
Published the results of his investigations of the inheritance of
1866 Gregor Mendel
"factors" in pea plants.
Carl Correns Hugo de
Mendel's principles were independently discovered and verified,
1900 Vries Erich von
marking the beginning of modern genetics.
Tschermak
Pointed out the interrelationships between cytology and
1902 Walter Sutton
Mendelism, closing the gap between cell morphology and
heredity.
Nettie Stevens
Independently described the behavior of sex chromosomes-XX
1905
Edmund Wilson
determines female; XY determines male.
Proposed that some human diseases are due to "inborn errors of
1908 Archibald Garrod
metabolism" that result from the lack of a specific enzyme.
Proposed a theory of sex-linked inheritance for the first mutation
1910 Thomas Hunt Morgan discovered in the fruit fly, Drosophila, white eye. This was
followed by the gene theory, including the principle of linkage.
1927 Hermann J. Muller
Used x-rays to cause artificial gene mutations in Drosophila.
Proposed that some unknown "principle" had transformed the
1928 Fred Griffith
harmless R strain of Diplococcus to the virulent S strain.
Harriet B. Creighton
1931
Demonstrated the cytological proof for crossing-over in maize.
Barbara McClintock
George Beadle
Irradiated the red bread mold, Neurospora, and proved that the
1941
Edward Tatum
gene produces its effect by regulating particular enzymes.
Oswald Avery
Reported that they had purified the transforming principle in
1944 Colin MacLeod
Griffith's experiment and that it was DNA.
Maclyn McCarty
Organized a phage course at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
which was taught for 26 consecutive years. This course was the
1945 Max Delbruck
training ground of the first two generations of molecular
biologists
late
Developed the hypothesis of transposable elements to explain
Barbara McClintock
1940s
color variations in corn.
Discovered a one-to-one ratio of adenine to thymine and guanine
1950 Erwin Chargaff
to cytosine in DNA samples from a variety of organisms.
1951 Rosalind Franklin
Obtained sharp X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA.
Used phages in which the protein was labeled with 35S and the
Martha Chase
1952
DNA with 32P for the final proof that DNA is the molecule of
Alfred Hershey
heredity.
Francis Crick
1953
Solved the three-dimensional structure of the DNA molecule.
James Watson

1958

Matthew Meselson
Frank Stahl

1958

Arthur Kornberg

1966
1970
1972

Marshall Nirenberg
H. Gobind Khorana
Hamilton Smith
Kent Wilcox
Paul Berg
Herb Boyer

1973

Joseph Sambrook

1973

Annie Chang
Stanley Cohen

1975
1977
1977
1978
1981

Fred Sanger

Used isotopes of nitrogen to prove the semiconservative

replication of DNA.
Purified DNA polymerase I from E. coli, the first enzyme that
made DNA in a test tube.
Led teams that cracked the genetic code- that triplet mRNA
codons specify each of the twenty amino acids.
Isolated the first restriction enzyme, HindII, that could cut DNA
molecules within specific recognition sites.
Produced the first recombinant DNA molecules.
Led the team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory that refined DNA
electrophoresis by using agarose gel and staining with ethidium
bromide.
Showed that a recombinant DNA molecule can be maintained and
replicated in E. coli.
International meeting at Asilomar, California urged the adoption
of guidelines regulating recombinant DNA experimentation.
Developed the chain termination (dideoxy) method for
sequencing DNA.
The first genetic engineering company (Genentech) is founded,
using recombinant DNA methods to make medically important
drugs.
Somatostatin became the first human hormone produced using
recombinant DNA technology.
Three independent research teams announced the discovery of
human oncogenes (cancer genes).