George Beadle

American geneticist (1903-1989)

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United States rank#234

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Fame53.3
Momentum0.0
United States rank#234
Academics rank#205
Wikipedia1.2K

Lived 1903–1989, aged 86United States

United States AcademicsAcademic

Wikipedia
57 languages
Cross-language footprint
Rank in United States
#234
Academics
Era
1903–1989
Aged 86
Awards
9
recognised works

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

He irradiated bread mold and cracked the code between genes and chemistry. The "one gene-one enzyme" hypothesis—born in a lab full of mutant Neurospora—earned George Beadle half a Nobel and rewrote how we understand what genes actually do.

Biography

About

George Wells Beadle was born October 22, 1903, an American geneticist who would spend years staring at fungus under controlled mutation. Working with Edward Tatum, he exposed the bread mold Neurospora crassa to x-rays, inducing mutations, then traced how each genetic break disrupted a specific enzyme in the cell's metabolic assembly line. The experiments were elegant and relentless: one mutation, one missing enzyme, one broken chemical step. In 1958 the work won him half the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for demonstrating that genes directly govern biochemical events inside cells—the "…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from George Beadle

George Beadle

saidSep 1959

Ionizing radiation has always been with us and will be for all foreseeable time. Our genetic system is probably well adjusted by natural selection to normal background radiation.

— in Scientific American, September 1959

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

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