Torbjörn Caspersson

Who was Torbjörn Caspersson?

Professor Torbjörn Oskar Caspersson was a Swedish cytologist and geneticist. He was born in Motala and attended the University of Stockholm, where he studied medicine and biophysics.

Caspersson made several key contributions to biology.

In the 1934 he and Einar Hammarsten showed that DNA was a polymer. Previous theories suggested that each molecule was only ten nucleotides long.

He provided William Astbury with well prepared samples of DNA for Astbury's pioneering structural measurements.

In 1936, in his doctoral thesis in chemistry, presented at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, he first studied genetic material inside a cell with an ultraviolet microscope to determine the nucleic acid content of cellular structures such as the nucleus and nucleolus using the Feulgen reaction to stain the DNA.

He worked with Jack Schultz in Stockholm from 1937–1939 on protein synthesis is cells and published the work in 1939, where he independent of Jean Brachet, working out the same problem using a different technique, found that cells making proteins are rich in ribonucleic acids RNA, implying that RNA is required to make proteins.