Who Was Esther Lederberg?

Esther Lederberg was a major pioneer of bacterial genetics.  She discovered the lambda phage, a bacterial virus which is widely used as a tool to study gene regulation and genetic recombination.  She also invented the replica plating technique, which is used to isolate the analyse bacterial mutants and tract antibiotic resistance.  (I don't konw what any of this even means!)



Esther was born in 1922, during a time when it was rare to even have women studying the sciences.  She was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family during the depression, and learned Hebrew from her Hungarian grandfather.  This was unusual at the time.  Boys were supposed to learn Hebrew, but Esther insisted she learn too and learned the language easily.  In 1946 Esther married Joshua Lederberg, a doctoral student at Yale at the time, who was interested in her lab work as part of her masters program at Stanford.  They remained married for 20 years.  During that time, Joshua went on to win the Nobel Prize.  Although they worked together on many studies in microbiology, Esther was never given the credit she deserved as an important part of Joshua's achievements.  This was just the way it was at the time.

In 1956 the Society of Illinois Bacteriologists awarded the Pasteur Award to both Joshua and Esther Lederberg, given in recognition of their contribution to microbiology and bacterial genetics.  Esther was another brilliant female scientist who never got the recognition she deserved.