Matthew Meselson has investigated DNA repair in cells and how cells recognize and destroy foreign DNA, and, with Werner Arber, was responsible for the discovery of restriction enzymes.
16 Facts About Matthew Meselson
2.
Matthew Meselson worked with Henry Kissinger under the Nixon administration to convince President Richard Nixon to renounce biological weapons, suspend chemical weapons production, and support an international treaty prohibiting the acquisition of biological agents for hostile purposes, which in 1972 became known as the Biological Weapons Convention.
3.
Matthew Meselson has received the Award in Molecular Biology from the National Academy of Sciences, the Public Service Award of the Federation of American Scientists, the Presidential Award of the New York Academy of Sciences, the 1995 Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal of the Genetics Society of America, as well as the Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science.
4.
Matthew Meselson was born in Denver, Colorado, on May 24,1930, and attended elementary and high-school in Los Angeles, California.
5.
At the University of Chicago, Matthew Meselson studied liberal arts including history and classics as an undergraduate from 1946 to 1949 after realizing upon arriving that the university had abolished bachelor's degrees in specialized field such as chemistry and physics.
6.
Matthew Meselson enrolled in Linus Pauling's freshman chemistry course, which he loved, and worked on a project for Pauling the same year on hemoglobin structure.
7.
Matthew Meselson subsequently returned to the University of Chicago for a year to enroll in courses in chemistry, physics, and math, though he did not receive another degree.
8.
Matthew Meselson was Assistant Professor of Physical Chemistry and then Senior Research Fellow at Caltech until he joined the Harvard faculty in 1960.
9.
In collaboration with Jean Weigle, Matthew Meselson then applied the density gradient method to studies of genetic recombination in the bacteriophage Lambda.
10.
In 1961, Sydney Brenner, Francois Jacob and Matthew Meselson used the density-gradient method to demonstrate the existence of messenger RNA.
11.
In 1963 Matthew Meselson served as a resident consultant in the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, where he became interested in chemical and biological weapons programs and policies.
12.
Matthew Meselson concluded that on the basis of available evidence the official Soviet explanation that the outbreak was caused by consumption of meat from infected cattle was plausible but that there should be an independent on-site investigation.
13.
Matthew Meselson is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Academie des Sciences, the Royal Society and the Russian Academy of Sciences and has received numerous awards and honors in the field of science and in public affairs.
14.
Matthew Meselson has served on the Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the Council of the Smithsonian Institution, the Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Advisory Board to the US Secretary of State and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the US National Academy of Sciences.
15.
Matthew Meselson is past President of the Federation of American Scientists, and presently is co-director of the Harvard Sussex Program on Chemical and Biological Weapons and a member of the board of directors of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
16.
Matthew Meselson married three times, first to Katherine Kaynis, then to Sarah Page, with whom he had two daughters, Amy and Zoe.