We have collected the biography of Esther Lederberg, one of the main pioneers with the new information and discoveries she added to bacterial genetics.
Her full name is Esther Miriam Zimmer, she was born on December 18, 1922, in the Bronx, New York. She was born as the eldest child of her father, printing house owner David Zimmer, and mother, Pauline Geller Zimmer. Zimmer has a brother named Benjamin. Close to her paternal grandmother, Zimmer asked her to teach her Hebrew. She learned the language very quickly by her grandmother, who accepted this unusual request.
Educated at Evander Childs High School in the Bronx, Zimmer graduated in 1938. Wanting to study French or literature in the continuation of her education, Zimmer turned her field of study to biochemistry. She did not give up on her decision, although everyone around her said that a woman would find it very difficult and difficult to make a career in science.
Zimmer, who started to work as a research assistant at the New York Botanical Garden, worked on the bread mold called "Neurospora crassa" with plant pathologist Bernard Ogilvie Dodge. With a bachelor's degree in genetics, Zimmer later went to work at the Carnegie Institution in Washington as a research fellow under scientist Alexander Hollaender, still researching "Neurospora crassa".
In 1944, Zimmer, who won a Stanford University scholarship working as an assistant to George Wells Beadle and Edward Tatum, proved her success by noticing and solving something unknown about the fly species Drosophila. Zimmer then traveled to western California, where she worked for a summer at the university's Hopkins Marine Station under microbiologist Cornelius Van Niel. She then enrolled in a graduate program in genetics at Stanford University, she.
That same year, she married Joshua Lederberg, then a student of Tatum and later a molecular biologist, she. After her husband became a professor at Yale University, Zimmer transferred to the Osborn Botanical Laboratory and then to the University of Wisconsin. The couple divorced in 1966.
Zimmer, who received her doctorate in 1950, achieved her first major success when she discovered a bacterial virus called the "lambda phage". Having done a lot of research on it, Zimmer was able to show that this virus behaves differently from other viruses. Zimmer's work formed the basis of much of the genetics work done in the second half of the twentieth century. Additionally, she was considered a pioneer in bacterial genetics for her work. In 1956, Zimmer and Joshua Lederberg were honored with the "Pasteur Medal" by the Illinois Bacteriologists Association for their fundamental work in bacterial genetics.
In addition to this success, Zimmer was the first to isolate the "λ bacteriophage" by inventing the amplification coating technique. Designed by Zimmer in 1951, this method allowed scientists to replicate bacterial colonies onto a series of agar plates with exactly the same spatial configuration. Working on this subject for a long time, Zimmer took part as a speaker at various symposiums and conferences.
Zimmer's discovery of the fertility factor (F factor) was found through experiments through her crossover. Later work by others proved that this factor is a bacterial DNA sequence containing genes that allow a bacterium to donate DNA to a recipient bacterium by direct contact in a process called conjugation.
The problem of mass-producing bacterial colonies in the same geometric configuration as on the original agar plate was solved by the copy-plating study first implemented by Zimmer and Joshua Lederberg. The duo chose to use the "replica coating" method to demonstrate the emergence of bacteriophages and antibiotic-resistant mutants in the absence of phages or antibiotics.
Zimmer returned to Stanford in 1959 with Joshua Lederberg. She remained at Stanford for the remainder of her career and from 1976 to 1986 directed the Plasmid Reference Center (PRC) at the Stanford School of Medicine. Meanwhile, she continued to organize the record of plasmids, transposons, and insertion sequences around the world. She also pioneered the system of naming splicing sequences and transposons in sequence, starting with "IS1" and "Tn1". She continued in the sequential numbering system until her retirement.
Although she retired from her position in the Stanford Department of Microbiology and Immunology in 1985, she only decided to continue his work at the PRC voluntarily.
Private life
Zimmer married Joshua Lederberg in 1946, and they separated and divorced in 1968. In the following years, she met an engineer, Matthew Simon, in 1989. The couple was able to share their interest in early music. The couple got married in 1993.
She died on November 11, 2006, in Zimmer, California, from pneumonia and congestive heart failure at the age of 83. Also a musician, Zimmer had an interest in early music and enjoyed playing medieval, Renaissance and baroque music with original instruments. A record player, Zimmer founded the "Mid-Peninsula Recorder Orchestra" in 1962, which plays compositions from the 13th century to the present.
Despite her achievements and being a pioneering research scientist, Zimmer faced many challenges as a female scientist in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, all of Zimmer's work and contributions were not enough for her to receive the Nobel Prize, as the number of women working in science was very few during her lifetime and she was the subject of constant debate. Being an advocate for herself and other women in the early years of the second wave of feminism, Zimmer, like many other female scientists at Stanford University, fought for recognition.
Developing the method called "The Lederberg", which is still used today, Zimmer laid the foundation for studies such as genetics, gene editing and gene recombination in bacteria with her support for science.