23 Facts About Seymour Benzer

Seymour Benzer was an American physicist, molecular biologist and behavioral geneticist.

Seymour Benzer's career began during the molecular biology revolution of the 1950s, and he eventually rose to prominence in the fields of molecular and behavioral genetics.

Seymour Benzer led a productive genetics research lab both at Purdue University and as the James G Boswell Professor of Neuroscience, Emeritus, at the California Institute of Technology.

Seymour Benzer had two older sisters, and his parents favored him as the only boy.

Seymour Benzer graduated from New Utrecht High School at 15 years old.

Seymour Benzer then moved on to Purdue University to earn his Ph.

Seymour Benzer performed research that led to the development of stable germanium rectifiers and discovered a germanium crystal able to be used at high voltages, among the scientific work that led to the first transistor.

At Brooklyn College, as a sixteen-year-old freshman, Seymour Benzer met Dorothy Vlosky, a twenty-one-year-old nurse.

Seymour Benzer later married her in New York City in 1942.

Seymour Benzer died of a stroke at the Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, California.

At Purdue University, Seymour Benzer developed the T4 rII system, a new genetic technique involving recombination in T4 bacteriophage rII mutants.

Seymour Benzer realized that by generating many r mutants and recording the recombination frequency between different r strains, one could create a detailed map of the gene, much as Alfred Sturtevant had done for chromosomes.

Seymour Benzer proved that mutations were distributed in many different parts of a single gene, and the resolving power of his system allowed him to discern mutants that differ at the level of a single nucleotide.

Seymour Benzer's work influenced many other scientists of his time.

In 1967, Seymour Benzer left the field of phage genetics and returned to the California Institute of Technology to work in behavioral genetics.

Seymour Benzer was one of the first scientists to rise to prominence in the field of behavioral genetics.

Hirsch artificially selected for behaviors of interest over many generations, while Seymour Benzer primarily used forward genetic mutagenesis screens to isolate mutants for a particular behavior.

Seymour Benzer used forward genetics to investigate the genetic basis of various behaviors such as phototaxis, circadian rhythms, and learning by inducing mutations in a Drosophila population and then screening individuals for altered phenotypes of interest.

In 1992 Seymour Benzer, working with Michael Rosbash, furthered this work by showing that the PER protein, which period codes for, is predominantly located in the nucleus.

Seymour Benzer was at the forefront of the study of neurodegeneration in fruit flies, modeling human diseases and attempting to suppress them.

Seymour Benzer contributed to the field of aging biology, looking for mutants with altered longevity and trying to dissect the mechanisms by which an organism can escape the inevitable functional downfall and its associated diseases.

Consequently, Seymour Benzer took interest in cancer biology and attended several conferences on breast cancer.

Seymour Benzer was a member of the French Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the Royal Society.