Joshua Lederberg died on February 2, at the age of 82.

Lederberg won half the 1958 Nobel Prize for medicine “for his discoveries concerning genetic recombination and the organization of the genetic material of bacteria”, thus pretty much fulfilling the ambitions he wrote down at the age of seven.

“He was in his 20s, going to Yale and getting his PhD and discovered that not only did bacteria have genes, which was not appreciated at the time, but that the genes can be transferred from one bacterial cell to another. This allowed the total mapping of all the genes in the bacterial cell,” James Darnell, a genetics researcher at Rockefeller, told Bloomberg.

“The only real competition for domination of the planet are the viruses. We’ve beaten everything else, but the viruses are going to be the tough ones,” Lederberg said in 1989 (Washington Post).

As well as the work that led to his Nobel, Lederberg also named the science of “exobiology”, working with NASA on missions to find life in space from the early 1960s; he was an adviser to the administrations of presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Carter, and worked on the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972. In the 1960s he wrote a weekly column for the Washington Post.

Profile and documents here, tributes and obituaries below the fold.

“Josh was one of the most creative scientists of our times. He thought more broadly and more deeply about more things than anyone I’ve ever known. His death is a loss to all of us,” said Stanley Cohen of Stanford University (LA Times obit).

“He was one of the great scientists of the 20th century. I know that’s a strong statement, but it’s justified,” said David Hamburg, a president emeritus of the Carnegie Corporation (NY Times obit).

“Dr Josh Lederberg was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century with staggering achievements from virology and microbiology to genetics and planetary exploration. He was not only a world-renowned scientist but also an advocate on science and public policy,” said Philip Pizzo, dean of Stanford medical school where Lederberg spent much of his career (Stanford statement).

“It’s sad to observe the passing of this scientific cohort who together uncovered some of the fundamental secrets of life, including Lederberg’s wife Esther, Seymour Benzer, and Francis Crick. Today we live in an age of big biology; Lederberg won his Nobel prize in large part for the work he did in near solitude as a graduate student. We may not see their likes again,” said Carl Zimmer (blog post).

“Lederberg truly was a visionary, and along with his ex-wife, Esther (who died just over a year ago), really jump-started the field of microbial genetics (and indeed, made it much easier to study genetics, period), winning a Nobel prize for his genetic work when he was only 33. … He was truly a living legend, and the void he leaves is palpable,” said Tara Smith (blog post).

“Dr Lederberg will be remembered for his endless contributions to molecular biology, to public understanding of medical progress and to the medical applications of the genome. Those who had the pleasure and honour of working with him will remember his kindness, his humility and his insistence on finding concrete answers to the difficult questions he often posed to Task Force members,” said Robert Goldberg, who worked with Lederberg on the 21st Century FDA Reform Task Force (blog post).