{"id":31215,"date":"2025-07-07T21:26:55","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T21:26:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=31215"},"modified":"2025-07-07T22:24:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T22:24:29","slug":"franklin-w-stahl-95-dies-helped-create-a-beautiful-dna-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=31215","title":{"rendered":"Franklin W. Stahl, 95, Dies; Helped Create a \u2018Beautiful\u2019 DNA Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"
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He and a colleague proved a theory advanced by the Nobel Prize winners James Watson and Francis Crick, who discovered DNA\u2019s helical structure.<\/p>\n

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Franklin W. Stahl, a molecular biologist who helped create a methodology to confirm how DNA replicates that was so elegant it has been remembered for more than five decades as \u201cthe most beautiful experiment in biology,\u201d died on April 2 at his home in Eugene, Ore. He was 95.<\/p>\n

The cause was congestive heart failure, his son Andy Stahl said. His death was not widely reported at the time, and there was no announcement about it from the University of Oregon in Eugene, where he was a professor and researcher.<\/p>\n

At his death, Dr. Stahl was an emeritus professor of molecular biology and genetics at the university\u2019s Institute of Molecular Biology. He had been at the university since 1959.<\/p>\n

Dr. Stahl\u2019s name and that of his collaborator, Matthew Meselson, were immortalized by the Meselson-Stahl Experiment, which is referenced in biology textbooks and taught in molecular genetics courses worldwide. In 2015, \u201cHelix Spirals,\u201d a musical tribute to the experiment, was composed by Augusta Read Thomas and performed by a string quartet in Boston.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The two biologists proved a theory advanced by the Nobel Prize winners James Watson and Francis Crick, who discovered DNA\u2019s helical structure in 1953. Watson and Crick posited in the journal Nature that DNA replicates in a so-called semi-conservative fashion.<\/p>\n

In 1958, Dr. Meselson and Dr. Stahl, postdoctoral fellows in Linus Pauling\u2019s laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., proved that Watson and Crick were correct, by using an experiment that was celebrated for its design, execution and results.<\/p>\n

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He and a colleague proved a theory advanced by the Nobel Prize winners James Watson and Francis Crick, who discovered DNA\u2019s helical structure.Franklin W. Stahl, a molecular biologist who helped create a methodology to confirm how DNA replicates that was so elegant it has been remembered for more than five decades as \u201cthe most beautiful experiment in biology,\u201d died on April 2 at his home in Eugene, Ore. He was 95.The cause was congestive heart failure, his son Andy Stahl said. His death was not widely reported at the time, and there was no announcement about it from the University of Oregon in Eugene, where he was a professor and researcher.At his death, Dr. Stahl was an emeritus professor of molecular biology and genetics at the university\u2019s Institute of Molecular Biology. He had been at the university since 1959.Dr. Stahl\u2019s name and that of his collaborator, Matthew Meselson, were immortalized by the Meselson-Stahl Experiment, which is referenced in biology textbooks and taught in molecular genetics courses worldwide. In 2015, \u201cHelix Spirals,\u201d a musical tribute to the experiment, was composed by Augusta Read Thomas and performed by a string quartet in Boston.The two biologists proved a theory advanced by the Nobel Prize winners James Watson and Francis Crick, who discovered DNA\u2019s helical structure in 1953. Watson and Crick posited in the journal Nature that DNA replicates in a so-called semi-conservative fashion.In 1958, Dr. Meselson and Dr. Stahl, postdoctoral fellows in Linus Pauling\u2019s laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., proved that Watson and Crick were correct, by using an experiment that was celebrated for its design, execution and results.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31217,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31215"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31218,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31215\/revisions\/31218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}