David Dressler, associate professor of Biochemistry, last week received one of the 15 Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Awards annually presented to young professors of chemistry, biochemistry and related fields.

Dressler can use the $35,000 for any experimental project during the next five years. Dressler and his students study the molecular mechanisms involved in DNA replication and genetic recombination.

Dressler said yesterday he may use the money to sponsor an expedition to the French Alps to repeat a century-old but never-reconfirmed experiment by Louis Pasteur.

Pasteur interpreted the experiment, which involved opening sealed, sterile flasks containing culture media under different atmospheric conditions, as a disproof of the then-accepted theory of spontaneous generation.