Photo credit: File:WalterGilbert2.jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · Public domain
Walter Gilbert
born 1932 · United States · 20th century
Nobel Chemistry 1980
American molecular biologist and physicist at Harvard who isolated the lac repressor, co-invented chemical DNA sequencing, and coined the term 'RNA world'.
Nobel Prize work
With Allan Maxam he devised chemical sequencing: DNA fragments are end-labelled, then cleaved at specific bases by chemical reactions, and the products separated on gels to read the sequence directly. The Maxam–Gilbert method was the first practical DNA sequencing technique and powered the early years of genomics.