Joshua Lederberg: Public Science and Re-Emerging Infectious Diseases with Nathan Crowe
Episode 53 - March 21, 2021
Nathan Crowe (U. of North Carolina-Wilmington) comes on the podcast to talk about the life and career of Joshua Lederberg, a key figure in various fields including biology, genetics, and disease from just after World War Two until his death in 2008. Nathan first sketches out Lederberg’s background and his early career, including his work that received a Nobel Prize in 1958 when he was in his mid-30s. He then talks to Merle and Lee about how Lederberg transformed his new status into various public science and governmental policy roles, which also expanded the topics he worked on to include exobiology and diseases among others. At the end, Nathan discusses how Lederberg is remembered now and what his legacy is for infectious diseases today.
Further Reading
- Mitchell, M. X. "Screening Out Controversy: Human Genetics, Emerging Techniques of Diagnosis, and the Origins of the Social Issues Committee of the American Society of Human Genetics, 1964-1973." Journal of the History of Biology 50, no. 2 (May 2017): 425–456.
- Wolfe, Audra. "Germs in Space: Joshua Lederberg, Exobiology, and the Public Imagination, 1958-1964." Isis 93 (2002): 183–205.
- The Joshua Lederberg Papers at the US National Library of Medicine “Profiles in Science.
Our Guest
Nathan Crowe,
Associate Professor, Department of History, University of North Carolina Wilmington
