George Davis Snell
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George Davis Snell | |
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Born | December 19, 1903 immunologist |
Institutions | Jackson Laboratory Brown University Washington University School of Medicine |
Doctoral advisor | William E. Castle |
George Davis Snell
Work
George Snell shared the 1980
Life
George Snell was born in Bradford, Massachusetts, the youngest of three children. His father (who was born in Minnesota) worked as a secretary for the local YMCA; he invented a device for winding induction coils for motorboat engines. Snell was educated in the Brookline, Massachusetts schools and then enrolled at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire where he continued his passion for mathematics and science, focusing on genetics. He received his bachelor's degree from Dartmouth in 1926.
On the recommendation of John Gerould, his genetics professor at Dartmouth, Snell did graduate work at
Upon receiving the PhD from
Snell then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the
This experience "served to convince me that research was my real love," Snell wrote in his autobiography.[2]"If it were to be research, mouse genetics was the clear choice and the Jackson Laboratory, founded in 1929 by Dr. Clarence Cook Little, one of Castle's earlier students, almost the inevitable selection as a place to work." The Jackson Laboratory was (and still is) the world's mecca for mouse genetics.
From 1933 to 1934, Snell was a teacher at Washington University in St. Louis.
After brief stints as teachers, in 1935 Snell joined the staff of The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island on the coast of Maine and he remained there for the entire balance of his long career. In Bar Harbor, he met and married Rhoda Carson. Together they had three sons, Thomas, Roy, and Peter. In his leisure time, Snell enjoyed skiing, a passion he developed during his years at Dartmouth, as well as tennis.
Snell received the Cancer Research Institute William B. Coley Award in 1978 for distinguished research in immunology. In 1988, he authored a substantial book, Search for a Rational Ethic, on the nature of ethics and the rules by which we live. It includes an evolution-based ethic founded on biological realities that he believed to be applicable to all human beings.
Snell died in Bar Harbor on June 6, 1996. His wife died in 1994.
Awards and honors
- 1935-68 The Jackson Laboratory, staff scientist
- 1952 Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1955 Hekteon Medal of American Medical Association
- 1962 Griffen Animal Care Panel Award
- 1962 Bertner Foundation Award
- 1967 Gregor Mendel Medal, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences
- 1968-96 The Jackson Laboratory, senior staff scientist emeritus
- 1970 Elected to National Academy of Sciences
- 1976 Gairdner Foundation International Award
- 1978 National Cancer Institute Award
- 1978 Elected to British Transplantation Society, honorary
- 1978 Wolf Prize in Medicine
- 1979 Elected to French Academy of Sciences, foreign associate
- 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- 1981 Founding member of the World Cultural Council[1]
- 1982 Elected to American Philosophical Society
- 1982 Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement[2]
- 1983 Elected to British Society of Immunology, honorary
See also
- C.C. Little
- Peter Alfred Gorer
- Leroy Stevens
References
- ^ "About Us". World Cultural Council. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
- American Academy of Achievement.
External links
- George D. Snell on Nobelprize.org including the Nobel Lecture Studies in Histocompatibility