Maurice Sanford Fox
| Maurice Sanford Fox | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Maurice Sanford Fox October 11, 1924 New York, New York |
| Residence | United States |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Molecular Biology |
| Institutions |
Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago |
| Doctoral advisor | Willard Libby |
| Doctoral students | David Botstein, Ray White, Michael Lichten |
| Other notable students | H. Robert Horvitz, Sam Kunes |
| Known for | Molecular Biology, Genetic Mutation |
| Notable awards | Docteur Honoris Causa, Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France (1994) |
Maurice S. Fox (born New York, October 11, 1924) is an American geneticist and molecular biologist, and professor Emeritus of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he served as department chair between 1985 and 1989. His pioneering investigations of bacterial transformation helped illuminate the mechanisms by which donor DNA enters and is integrated into a host cell. His research also contributed to our understanding of mechanisms of DNA mutation, recombination, and mismatch repair more generally. Ancillary activities include his critical role in the establishment of the Council for a Livable World. He was married to photo researcher Sally Fox for over 50 years, has three sons (Jonathan, Gregory, and Michael).
Maurice Fox (Maury) was born of poor Russian Jewish immigrants and spent his formative years living in New York City. Like many others of his generation, he benefited from an excellent public school system in which a budding interest in science was fostered from an early age. His study of chemistry began at Stuyvesant High School and, after a brief stint at Queens College, and another as weather forecaster in the U.S. Army Air Force during WWII, culminated in a Ph.D. under Willard Libby at the University of Chicago in 1951. It was at Chicago that he first met, and soon became a disciple, protégé, friend and colleague of, Leó Szilárd. Szilárd's biography contains many references to Fox. Szilárd recruited him into the small but growing ranks of the new discipline of molecular biology. In 1953, he moved to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research to work in Roland Hotchkiss' group.
It was a heady time, in which bright young people, coming from a range of scientific disciplines, were challenged to pose questions about biology on which their diverse skills might be brought to bear. This period has often been referred to as the "Golden Age of Molecular Biology," but its particular ethos shaped Fox's research for the next half century, as he continued to pose novel kinds of, and novel approaches to, questions about molecular genetics, about cancer, about adaptive mutation; to insist on the pursuit of unexamined possibilities; and to free and open sharing of ideas with colleagues and students. His life has also been marked by an ongoing commitment (shared with Szilárd) to nurturing the young, and to fulfilling his particular social and political responsibilities as a scientist.
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