Nathans, Daniel, 1928-1999

Microbiologist (1928-1999). Nathans received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Delaware in 1950 and his M.D. from the Washington University School of Medicine in 1954. He served as an intern (1954-1955) and resident (1957-1959) at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York, and as a clinical associate (1955-1957) at the National Institutes of Health. Nathans served as a guest investigator (1959-1962) at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, after which he joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as professor and director of the Department of Microbiology. Nathans, Werner Arber and Hamilton O. Smith shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1978 for their work on the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application to the problems of molecular genetics.