Matthew Meselson

Matthew Stanley Meselson (born May 24, 1930) is an American geneticist and molecular biologist whose research was important in showing how DNA replicates, recombines and is repaired in cells. In his mature years, he has been an active chemical and biological weapons activist and consultant. He is married to the medical anthropologist and biological weapons writer Jeanne Guillemin. He began studying chemistry and graduated from the University of C... more

Matthew Stanley Meselson (born May 24, 1930) is an American geneticist and molecular biologist whose research was important in showing how DNA replicates, recombines and is repaired in cells. In his mature years, he has been an active chemical and biological weapons activist and consultant. He is married to the medical anthropologist and biological weapons writer Jeanne Guillemin. He began studying chemistry and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1951. He went on to study under Linus Pauling who assigned him work on x-ray crystallography which he later wrote a thesis on in 1958. He was a research fellow and then Assistant Professor of Physical Chemistry at CalTech until he joined the Harvard faculty in 1960, where he conducts research in molecular genetics and evolution. He started in Harvard as associate professor and taught undergraduate genetics for many years. In 1957 with Franklin Stahl he showed that DNA replicates semi-conservatively. The Meselson-Stahl experiment used... less