He was born in Montclair, N.J. on May 23,1925. He was brought up in the Washington Heights District of Upper Manhattan, New York City, where he received his education in Public School 46, Junior High School 164 and Stuyvesant High School. From 1941 to 1944 he studied at Columbia College, where he obtained his B.A. with honours in Zoology (premedical course), and from 1944 to 1946 at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University Medical School. Here he carried out part-time research with Professor F. J. Ryan in the Department of Zoology. Subsequently he went to the Department of Microbiology and Botany at Yale University, New Haven, Conn., as Research Fellow of the Jane Coffin Childs Fund for Medical Research and, during 1946-1947, as a graduate student with Professor E. L. Tatum. He was awarded his Ph.D. degree in 1948.

In 1947, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Genetics at the University of Wisconsin, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1950 and Professor in 1954. He organized the Department of Medical Genetics in 1957, of which he was Chairman during 1957-1958.

Stanford University Medical School entrusted to him the organization of its Department of Genetics and appointed him Professor and Executive Head in 1959. Since 1962, he has been Director of the Kennedy Laboratories for Molecular Medicine.

Lederberg was Visiting Professor of Bacteriology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1950; and Fulbright Visiting Professor of Bacteriology at Melbourne University, Australia, in 1957. In the latter year, he was also elected to the National Academy of Sciences (USA).

While at Yale, Lederberg married Esther M. Zimmer in 1946. They have no children. Mrs. Lederberg had obtained her M.A. at Stanford with Professor G. W. Beadle during 1944-1946, and her Ph.D. degree at the University of Wisconsin in 1950. She is working full time as research associate.

From Nobel Lectures, Physiology or Medicine 1942-1962.