Oliver Smithies (born June 23, 1925) is a British-born American geneticist and Nobel laureate, credited with the invention of gel electrophoresis in 1955, and the simultaneous discovery, with Mario Capecchi, of the technique of homologous recombination of transgenic DNA with genomic DNA, a much more reliable method of altering animal genomes than previously used, and the technique behind gene targeting and knockout mice.
Smithies was born in Hali...
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Oliver Smithies (born June 23, 1925) is a British-born American geneticist and Nobel laureate, credited with the invention of gel electrophoresis in 1955, and the simultaneous discovery, with Mario Capecchi, of the technique of homologous recombination of transgenic DNA with genomic DNA, a much more reliable method of altering animal genomes than previously used, and the technique behind gene targeting and knockout mice.
Smithies was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England. He has said that his love of science comes from an early fascination with radios and telescopes.
Smithies read Physiology for a BA First class 1946 and then earned a second bachelor's degree in chemistry. He also received a MA 1951 and a DPhil in Biochemistry in 1951 at Balliol College, Oxford. On scholarship to Oxford, Smithies dropped out of medical school to study chemistry instead.
Because of a visa problem, from 1953 to 1960 Smithies was an associate research faculty member in the Connaught Medical Research...
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