Sol Spiegelman

Who was Sol Spiegelman?

Sol Spiegelman was an American molecular biologist. He developed the technique of nucleic acid hybridization, which helped to lay the groundwork for advances in recombinant DNA technology.

Spiegelman was born and educated in New York City, and earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the City College of New York in 1939. He began his graduate studies at Columbia University in 1940, looking into cellular physiology. He completed his graduate studies at Washington University in St. Louis where he also lectured in physics and applied mathematics, receiving his doctorate there in 1944. After a year as a U.S. Public Health Service Fellow at the University of Minnesota, he joined the faculty of the University of Illinois and later became a professor of microbiology where he stayed for 20 years.

In 1962, he improved a technique that allowed the detection of specific RNA and DNA molecules in cells. Called nucleic acid hybridization originally developed by Rich and Davies in 1956, , it was the combination of viral DNA and viral RNA which helped to lay the groundwork for advances in recombinant DNA technology.