Frederick Griffith was born in 1881 and died in 1941. He was a
bacteriologist who discovered that if he put
pathogenic (
disease-causing)
pneumococcus bacteria which had been killed by heat in with
nonpathogenic pneumococcus bacteria which were alive, then the live, nonpathogenic bacteria would become pathogenic. His work became the groundwork for other scientists to discover that
DNA was the factor which transformed the
bacteria.
From the BioTech Dictionary at http://biotech.icmb.utexas.edu/. For further information see the BioTech homenode.