Norton Zinder

In 1966 he was awarded the NAS Award in Molecular Biology from the National Academy of Sciences.

Genetic transduction and RNA bacteriophage

Working as a graduate student with Joshua Lederberg, Zinder discovered that a bacteriophage can carry genes from one bacterium to another. Initial experiments were carried out using Salmonella. Zinder and Lederberg named this process of genetic exchange transduction.

Later, Zinder discovered the first bacteriophage that contained RNA as its genetic material. At that time, Harvey Lodish (now of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research) worked in his lab.

Norton Zinder died in 2012 of pneumonia after a long illness.