Early in his professional life, George Wells Beadle worked in the laboratory of Thomas Hunt Morgan, the geneticist who helped to revolutionize what we know about genetics--the inheritance of characteristics by the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) found in the chromosomes of cells. Beadle's innovative research on such diverse living things as corn, fruit flies, and bread mold helped to demystify the activities of genes, making it possible to reduce the inheritance of a particular characteristic to a series of steps needed for the manufacture of biochemicals, notably enzymes. For his work on the "one gene-one enzyme" concept, he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Edward Lawrie Tatum and Joshua Lederberg in 1958.

Beadle was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, on October 22, 1903, to Chauncey Elmer and Hattie Albro Beadle. He probably would have worked on the family farm if not for a high school science teacher who advised him...