Alexander Hollaender
![Alexander Hollaender at Cold Spring Harbor Symposium, c. 1950's
<br> Photograph by [[Esther Lederberg]]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Hollaender_at_CSH.jpg)
Hollaender was born in Samter, German Empire (Szamotuły, Poland), he emigrated to the US in 1921. In 1939 Hollaender published research showing that the mutations of spores of the ringworm fungus occurred in the same spectrum as the absorption spectrum of nucleic acids indicating that nucleic acids form the building blocks of genes. A young Esther M. Zimmer, who worked with Dr. Hollaender at the U. S. Public Health Service (Bethesda, MD), published with Dr. Hollaender, Eva Sansome and Milislav Demerec in this very early field of x-ray- and UV-induced mutations. Later on, Esther M. Zimmer (now Esther Lederberg) became one of the most influential founders of bacterial and bacteriophage (Lambda phage) genetics. Later on, Hollaender worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratories with M. Laurance Morse, who himself later went on to collaborate with Esther Lederberg.
His research was not appreciated for its discovery at the time, and later scientists reports were necessary before science accepted the role of nucleic acids as the genetic material. Historians of science now realize his early discovery, and his Fermi Award recognized this discovery.
In 1981 Hollaender established the Council for Research Planning in Biological Sciences, and was its president at the time of his death from a pulmonary embolism in 1986. The US National Academy of Sciences gives the Alexander Hollaender Award in Biophysics every three years in his honor. Provided by Wikipedia
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