Martha Chase and Alfred D. Hershey

Martha Chase and Alfred D. Hershey

Alfred D. Hershey

Martha Chase

Personal biography

Martha Chase was born on November 30th 1927 in Cleveland, Ohio. She attended Wooster College in Los Angeles, California and earned her bachelor degree. In 1964 she got her doctoral degree from the University of Southern California.

Alfred Day Hershey was born Dec 4th, 1908 in Oswosso, Michigan. He married Harriet Davidson in 1945; they had one son together named Peter.

Alfred enjoyed gardening, woodworking and classical music; in the 80's he became interested in computers and used them to catalog his classical music. Alfred Hershey died on May 22nd 1997.

Educational/occupational biography

After her studies she married Richard Epstein and changed her name to Martha Cowles Chase Epstein. After only a couple months of being married the two got divorced and Martha moved back to Cleveland with her father Samuel. After graduating college Martha became an assistant to Alfred at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Cold spring Harbor, New York.

Alfred D. Hershey attended Michigan State College and received a bachelor of Science in 1930 and a Ph.D. in 1934. From 1934-1950 he was teaching and researching at the department of bacteriology at the Washington University, School of Medicine. In 1950 he became a staff member at the department of genetics, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Cold Spring Harbour, New York. This is where Martha Chase and himself conducted their experiments. in 1962 he was appointed Director of the genetics research unit and in 1974 he retired.

Martha Chase died on August 8th 2003 of pneumonia, she was an avid knitter in her old age and suffered from dementia. A type of memory loss problem.

Awards and achievements

Alfred Hershey received an honorary doctorate of science from the university of Chicago in 1967. He is a recipient of the Kimber Genetics award of the national academy of sciences. in 1970 he was honored with an M.D.h.c from Michigan State University. He received a nobel prize in 1969 for physiology or medicine with Max Delbrock and Salvador Luria.

Their Claim to Fame

Hershey and Chase discovered that DNA is the genetic material in cells not protein.

How They Did It

Hershey and Chase knew that a bacterial virus is a simple organism that only consists of a protein as the exterior and DNA within it. When a bacterial virus attaches to a host cell the virus controls the host cell to make more viruses. Alfred and Martha wanted to know whether the protein or the DNA was controlling the host cell.

To determine what substance was responsible for controlling a host cell Hershey and chase investigated the composition of protein and DNA. DNA contains a lot of phosphourus