Oswald Theodore Avery (1877 – 1955)

    Oswald Theodore Avery (1877–1955) was a Canadian-born American bacteriologist whose research established DNA’s capacity to transmit hereditary information. He was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and his family moved to New York City in 1877. He obtained his medical degree from Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 1913, he joined the Rockefeller Institute Hospital in New York, where he investigated pneumococcal pneumonia. His research connected bacterial chemistry with immunity and disease, and it helped establish immunochemistry as a major field of investigation.

    Avery’s investigations eventually addressed the phenomenon of bacterial transformation that Frederick Griffith first reported in 1928. In 1944, Avery, Colin MacLeod, and Maclyn McCarty published evidence that DNA was the substance responsible for the stable hereditary change in pneumococci. Their carefully controlled chemical exclusion of Protein challenged the widespread belief that the protein component of chromosomes carried genetic information, and for this reason was not widely accepted as definitive. Along with the Hershey-Chase experiment, it provided a major motivation for Watson & Crick's investigation of the structure of DNA. Avery himself approached the implications cautiously. In 1945, Avery received the Royal Society’s Copley Medal in 1945, and the Lasker Award in 1947. Avery is high on the list of those whose work deserved a Nobel Prize, but never received one.