Nobel laureate and recombinant DNA pioneer Paul Berg dies

Biochemist Paul Berg, who shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1980 for his contributions to basic research involving nucleic acids and is often referred to as the founder of genetic engineering, has died at the age of 96. Born in the US to Jewish immigrants from Russia, Berg was the first to introduce DNA from one organism into another. He was also a founding member of Stanford’s biochemistry department, serving as an emeritus professor there until his death on 15 February at his home on the university’s campus in California.

Berg is renowned for techniques he developed to splice and join DNA, which helped spawn recombinant DNA technology and the field of biotechnology. He published over 200 scientific articles throughout his career, retiring from research in 2000. Concerns about the potential impact of recombinant DNA led Berg to join calls for a pre-emptive, voluntary moratorium on genetic engineering studies in 1974.

After earning his undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Pennsylvania State University in 1948, he received a PhD in biochemistry from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio in 1952, followed by a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the American Cancer Society. He then became a professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis between 1955 and 1959, before settling at Stanford.