Walter Goad (1925–2000) was a nuclear physicist at the

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...

. During the 1960s, Goad turned his attention from physics to biology and he is best known for his contributions to the founding of

GenBank The GenBank sequence database is an open access, annotated collection of all publicly available nucleotide sequences and their protein translations. It is produced and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI; a part ...

, the most widely used repository for DNA sequence data.

Early life and education

Goad was born to working class parents in Marlow, Georgia, in 1925. Growing up during the Depression, his family moved frequently in search of work. When he was twelve years old, Goad began to work for a radio repairman and soon after obtained the qualification to work as an engineer at a local radio station. In 1941, Goad moved from the South to

Schenectady Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Y ...

, New York, to take up a job at new radio station. The owner of the station sponsored Goad to attend

Union College Union College is a private liberal arts college in Schenectady, New York. Founded in 1795, it was the first institution of higher learning chartered by the New York State Board of Regents, and second in the state of New York, after Columbia Co ...

where he studied physics and also enrolled in the

V-12 Navy College Training Program The V-12 Navy College Training Program was designed to supplement the force of commissioned officers in the United States Navy during World War II. Between July 1, 1943, and June 30, 1946, more than 125,000 participants were enrolled in 131 colleg ...

. Graduating in the spring of 1945, Goad was assigned to a Navy ship in

Manila Manila ( , ; fil, Maynila, ), officially the City of Manila ( fil, Lungsod ng Maynila, ), is the capital of the Philippines, and its second-most populous city. It is highly urbanized and, as of 2019, was the world's most densely populate ...

just as World War II was coming to an end. On his discharge in June 1946, Goad began graduate studies in the physics department at the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

. The following year he transferred to

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

where he began to work on a PhD in cosmic ray physics under the supervision of Lothar Nordheim.

Career

Work on the hydrogen bomb

In 1950, Nordheim was invited to come to Los Alamos to contribute to ongoing work on the

hydrogen bomb A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...

. As Nordheim's student, Goad accompanied him. Although Goad was ostensibly at Los Alamos to finish his thesis on cosmic rays, he soon became involved in the hydrogen bomb work, making some important contributions. After the successful test of the hydrogen bomb in 1952, Goad returned to his thesis work, obtaining his PhD in 1953. In the 1950s, Goad continued to work on problems related to nuclear physics and nuclear weapons; he would remain at Los Alamos for the rest of his career.

Biology

In the 1960s, Goad developed an increasing interest in problems in biology, especially in the field of molecular biology. To develop his interest, in 1964–65 Goad spent a sabbatical year at the

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: University of Colorado Boulder, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, University of Colorado Denver, and the University of Co ...

Medical Center in

Denver Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

. There he began to work on some problems in biology, especially in collaboration with the physical chemist John Cann. By the early 1970s, Goad was spending almost all of his time working on biological, rather than physics, problems. In 1974, Goad became a key member of the newly established T-10 Group (Theoretical Biology and Biophysics) at Los Alamos.

GenBank

During the 1970s, the T-10 group became especially interested in protein and nucleotide sequences. A significant quantity of such sequences were only just beginning to become available at this time. Goad assembled a group of young physicists – including

Temple Smith Temple Ferris Smith (born March 7, 1939) is an emeritus professor in biomedical engineering who helped to develop the Smith-Waterman algorithm with Michael Waterman in 1981. The Smith-Waterman algorithm serves as the basis for multi sequence comp ...

, Myron Stein, Mike Waterman, William Beyer, and

Minoru Kanehisa (born January 23, 1948) is a Japanese bioinformatician. He is a project professor at Kyoto University, technical director of Pathway Solutions Inc and president of NPO Bioinformatics Japan. He is one of Japan's most recognized and respected bio ...

– to work on mathematical problems involved with sequence comparison and analysis. As part of this effort, in 1979 Goad established the Los Alamos Sequence Database to collect nucleotide sequences that could be used for analysis. The Los Alamos Sequence Database was intended to be a pilot project. Goad solicited the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

for funds to set up a larger and more permanent sequence database. In 1981, the

issued a competitive request for proposals to establish such a data bank. In 1982, a 5-year $2 million contract to establish and operate the

database was awarded to Goad and his co-workers at Los Alamos (working jointly with

Bolt, Beranek, and Newman Raytheon BBN (originally Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc.) is an American research and development company, based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. In 1966, the Franklin Institute awarded the firm the Frank P. Brown ...

). Goad's team at Los Alamos ran GenBank between 1982 and 1987.

References

External links

Obituary at the Los Alamos Labs
*[https://books.google.com/books?id=bvY21DGa1OwC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=Walter+Goad&source=web&ots=gJUA1WPcnC&sig=UBkPXUaQEt_CKCbot7aVjNL1foE&hl=en Bioinformatics: Sequence and Genome Analysis By David W. Mount]
Walter Goad Papers
at the American Philosophical Society {{DEFAULTSORT:Goad, Walter American geneticists 1925 births 2000 deaths Union College (New York) alumni United States Navy personnel of World War II American expatriates in the Philippines University of California, Berkeley alumni Duke University alumni