1908-1997

American geneticist and a founding member of the "phage group" who helped to establish that DNA carries the genetic code in all living things. In their famous "blender experiments" on radioactively labeled bacteriophage virus in 1952, Hershey and Martha Chase showed that viral DNA, and not the protein coat that surrounds it, contains genetic information. Hershey shared the 1969 Nobel Prize with Max Delbrück and Salvador Luria.