Alfred Mirsky

Alfred Ezra Mirsky (October 17, 1900 – June 19, 1974) was an American pioneer in molecular biology.

Mirsky graduated from Harvard College in 1922, after which he studied for two years at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons until 1924 when he moved to the University of Cambridge on a US National Research Council fellowship for the academic year 1924–1925. He received his PhD from Cambridge in 1926, with a dissertation under Lawrence J. Henderson on the Haemoglobin molecule, completing work begun under Joseph Barcroft.

On May 25, 1926 Mirsky married Reba Paeff, who went on to become a renowned children's author; they had a daughter, Reba Goodman and a son, Jonathan Mirsky.

In 1927 Mirsky was appointed Lab Assistant to Alfred E. Cohn at the then Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, beginning his association with Rockefeller University. During a sabbatical year at the California Institute of Technology, Mirsky published a paper with Linus Pauling on the general theory of protein structure, suggesting that the structure of proteins are coiled in a specific configuration that accounts for the function in the body, and that the protein is denatured when that configuration is lost by breaking the hydrogen bonds that stabilize the structure.

One of Mirsky's more notorious contributions while at the Rockefeller Institute was his attempt to discredit Oswald Avery. Avery had correctly shown that DNA was likely the agent of heredity. However, Mirsky went to great lengths to block Avery's discovery because of doubts that DNA was the sole genetic material. It is said he even urged the Karolinska Institute in Sweden not to award Avery the Nobel Prize. Eventually Mirsky's efforts were successful. Avery did not win the prize, despite as Erwin Chargaff claims, Avery's work was worth two Nobel Prizes.

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