Biologist Awarded Top Prize

A Harvard professor responsible for one of the most famous biology experiments of all time will be rewarded this Friday with the top American prize in science.

Cabot Professor of Natural Sciences Matthew S. Meselson, who laid the foundations for the study of DNA and contributed to the U.S. ban on biological weapons, will receive the Lasker Award for Special Achievement—which comes with a $25,000 award and a statuette of Winged Victory—at a special ceremony in New York.

“His work for which he is cited is some of the most important work in the last 50 years in biology,” said J. Woodland Hastings, Mangelsdorf Professor of Natural Sciences. “Awards like his are long overdue.”

Many past Lasker winners—though typically those in other categories—have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

Meselson, 74, is best known for the 1958 Meselson-Stahl experiment, taught in biology classes around the world. The experiment showed that when DNA is separated into two strands, new strands are synthesized to match the old—an idea that was proposed by Watson and Crick, but not proven until Meselson’s experiment.

“In one experiment, it confirmed that sort of throw-away statement in the Watson-Crick model,” said Gund Professor of Neuroscience John Dowling, who sat on the Lasker awards committee between 2000 and 2003. “Many people have talked about this as one of the most beautiful experiments in biology.”

Meselson is modest about his scientific discoveries. “If you don’t make them, someone else will,” he said.

Born in Denver, Meselson moved to Los Angeles when he was two years old. He said he spent hours in his basement laboratory and always loved science. “I never thought of anything else,” he said.

Meselson left high school a year-and-a-half early, and never earned a diploma because he hadn’t taken the three requisite physical education classes. He entered the University of Chicago, and graduated with a degree in philosophy because at the time the school didn’t offer bachelor’s degrees in chemistry. But he didn’t give up on biology.

“You could call it a philosophical motivation,” Meselson said. “What is the secret of life? This magical thing that was DNA. And even before the structure of DNA was known, me and other people were fascinated by how other atoms can create life. It was that tingle—trying to understand what made inanimate matter living.”

Meselson went on to the California Institute of Technology, where he performed the famous Meselson-Stahl experiment, and later to Harvard.

Meselson left his mark on weapons of mass destruction by contributing to President Richard Nixon’s biological weapons policy, an opportunity he came upon through a Harvard connection.

Henry A. Kissinger ’50 had worked in Harvard’s Government Department before becoming Nixon’s Secretary of State, and Meselson said the two had been “very close.” After he became Secretary of State, Kissinger asked Meselson to write several papers on the effects of biological weapons, which led soon after to a 1969 ban that ended the U.S. biological weapons program.

Ironically, Meselson’s name was later found on one of Nixon’s “enemy” lists.

Now, Meselson and his lab are trying to understand why sex exists by studying small asexual animals called rotifers. “It’s not clear why there have to be males,” he said.

The Lasker award has been awarded by the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation in three categories—basic medical research, clinical medical research and special achievement—for the last 50 years.

“Why many people consider it to be very important is that many winners of the Lasker prize have gone on to win the Nobel Prize,” Dowling said, but added that the medical category winners are typically the ones to do so.