Alexander Hollaender (9 December 1898 – 6 December 1986) was one of the world's leading researchers in

radiation biology Radiobiology (also known as radiation biology, and uncommonly as actinobiology) is a field of clinical and basic medical sciences that involves the study of the action of ionizing radiation on living things, especially health effects of radiation. ...

and in genetic mutations. In 1983 he was given the

Enrico Fermi Award The Enrico Fermi Award is a scientific award conferred by the President of the United States. It is awarded to honor scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy. It was establ ...

by the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

for his contributions in founding the science of radiation biology, and for his leadership in promoting "scientific exchanges" between American scientists and scientists from

developing countries A developing country is a sovereign state with a lesser developed industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to other countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. There is also no clear agreem ...

. Hollaender was born in Samter,

German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...

(Szamotuły, Poland), he emigrated to the US in 1921. In 1939 Hollaender published research showing that the mutations of spores of the ringworm fungus occurred in the same

spectrum A spectrum (plural ''spectra'' or ''spectrums'') is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without gaps, across a continuum. The word was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colors i ...

as the

absorption spectrum Absorption spectroscopy refers to spectroscopic techniques that measure the absorption of radiation, as a function of frequency or wavelength, due to its interaction with a sample. The sample absorbs energy, i.e., photons, from the radiating f ...

nucleic acid Nucleic acids are biopolymers, macromolecules, essential to all known forms of life. They are composed of nucleotides, which are the monomers made of three components: a 5-carbon sugar, a phosphate group and a nitrogenous base. The two main cl ...

s indicating that nucleic acids form the building blocks of

gene In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...

s. A young Esther M. Zimmer, who worked with Dr. Hollaender at the U. S. Public Health Service (Bethesda, MD), published with Dr. Hollaender, Eva Sansome and

Milislav Demerec Milislav Demerec (January 11, 1895 – April 12, 1966) was a Croatian-American geneticist, and the director of the Department of Genetics, Carnegie Institution of Washington IW now Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) from 1941 to 1960, re ...

in this very early field of x-ray- and UV-induced mutations. Later on, Esther M. Zimmer (now

Esther Lederberg Esther Miriam Zimmer Lederberg (December 18, 1922 – November 11, 2006) was an American microbiologist and a pioneer of bacterial genetics. She discovered the bacterial virus λ and the bacterial fertility factor F, devised the first impl ...

) became one of the most influential founders of bacterial and bacteriophage (

Lambda phage ''Enterobacteria phage λ'' (lambda phage, coliphage λ, officially ''Escherichia virus Lambda'') is a bacterial virus, or bacteriophage, that infects the bacterial species ''Escherichia coli'' (''E. coli''). It was discovered by Esther Lederb ...

) genetics. Later on, Hollaender worked at

Oak Ridge National Laboratories Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a U.S. multiprogram science and technology national laboratory sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and administered, managed, and operated by UT–Battelle as a federally funded research and ...

with M. Laurance Morse, who himself later went on to collaborate with Esther Lederberg. His research was not appreciated for its discovery at the time, and later scientists reports were necessary before science accepted the role of nucleic acids as the genetic material. Historians of science now realize his early discovery, and his Fermi Award recognized this discovery. In 1981 Hollaender established the Council for Research Planning in Biological Sciences, and was its president at the time of his death from a pulmonary embolism in 1986. The US

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

gives the

Alexander Hollaender Award in Biophysics The Alexander Hollaender Award in Biophysics is awarded by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences "for outstanding contributions in biophysics". Named in honor of Alexander Hollaender, it has been awarded every three years since 1998. Recipien ...

every three years in his honor.

References

External links

National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hollaender, Alexander 1898 births 1986 deaths Radiobiologists American biophysicists People from Szamotuły People from the Province of Posen People from Oak Ridge, Tennessee German emigrants to the United States Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Enrico Fermi Award recipients Deaths from pulmonary embolism