SIGNED BY BOTH BEADLES. The Language of Life. An introduction to the science of genetics

Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1966. First edition (stated).

1966 ILLUSTRATED LAY GUIDE TO GENETICS BY NOBEL LAUREATE GENETICIST GEORGE BEADLE AND HIS WIFE MURIEL BEADLE--SIGNED BY BOTH.

9 1/2 inches tall hardcover, green cloth binding, gray cloth spine, inscribed on half-title page: "Sincerely,/ George Beadle/ Muriel Beadle," x, [4], 242 pp, many illustrations in text, a few marginal pencil notes, very good in very good minus jacket with darkened edges, in Brodart protective cover. LAID IN: Newspaper review of the book by Noman Ross.

GEORGE WELLS BEADLE (1903 – 1989) was an American geneticist. In 1958 he shared one-half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Edward Tatum for their discovery of the role of genes in regulating biochemical events within cells. He also served as the 7th President of the University of Chicago. Beadle and Tatum's key experiments involved exposing the bread mold Neurospora crassa to x-rays, causing mutations. In a series of experiments, they showed that these mutations caused changes in specific enzymes involved in metabolic pathways. These experiments led them to propose a direct link between genes and enzymatic reactions, known as the One gene-one enzyme hypothesis.

MURIEL BEADLE (1915-1994) received a bachelor's degree Phi Beta Kappa from Pomona College. In the late 1930s, she worked as an advertising copywriter for Carson Pirie Scott & Co. From 1948 to 1958, she was a feature writer, fashion editor and woman's editor for the Los Angeles Mirror-News. She and her husband, a geneticist, co-wrote the 1966 book "The Language of Life" (offered here). In it, according to Tribune staff writer Ronald Kotulak, the two "surmounted the scholarly language barrier that has been the downfall of other authors. Each scientific word and concept has been pounded down into everyday language." Her other books were "These Ruins Are Inhabited," a study of life at Oxford University, where her husband won the Nobel Prize; "The Fortnightly of Chicago: The City and Its Women 1873-1973;" and "The Cat: History, Biology and Behavior."