Dr. Oswald T. Avery
(1877 - 1955) Canada - U.S.A.
Bacteriologist, research physician
Born in Canada, one of the first molecular biologists, and one of the founders of  immunochemistry, he became a U.S. citizen in 1918 and spent 35 years of his career working at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. His career focused on a systematic effort to understand the biological activities of pathogenic bacteria through a knowledge of their chemical composition. Dr. Avery also served as president of the American Association of Immunologists, the American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists, and the Society of American Bacteriologists. He is best known as a discoverer (in 1943) that deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) serves as genetic material:
"For a long time, biologists thought that 'genes', the units of inheritance, were made up of protein. In 1944, in what was arguably the defining moment for nucleic acid research, Oswald Avery, Maclyn McCartyand Colin MacLeod, at Rockefeller Institute (now University) Hospital, New York, proved that DNA was the material of inheritance, the so-called stuff of life. They showed that the heritable property of virulence from one infectious strain of pneumococcus (the bacterial agent of pneumonia) could be transferred to a noninfectious bacterium with pure DNA. They further supported their conclusions by showing that this 'transforming' activity could be destroyed by the DNA-digesting enzyme DNAase2'3. This work first linked genetic information with DNA and provided the historical platform of modern genetics."
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