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Edward Tatum

Edward Lawrie Tatum, American geneticist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1975)

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Born
December 14, 1909
Died
November 5, 1975
Zodiac sign
Sagittarius
Birth year
1909

About Edward Tatum

Edward Lawrie Tatum (December 14, 1909 – November 5, 1975) was an American geneticist. He shared half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958 with George Beadle for showing that genes control individual steps in metabolism. The other half of that year's award went to Joshua Lederberg. Tatum was an elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Edward Lawrie Tatum was born on December 14, 1909, in Boulder, Colorado to Arthur L. Edward Lawrie Tatum attended college at the University of Chicago for two years, before transferring to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he received his BA in 1931 and PhD in 1934.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Edward Tatum timeline

  1. Edward Lawrie Tatum was born on December 14, 1909, in Boulder, Colorado to Arthur L.
  2. Edward Lawrie Tatum attended college at the University of Chicago for two years, before transferring to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he received his BA in 1931 and PhD in 1934.

The world when Edward Tatum was born

Edward Tatum was born in 1909. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1909

  • Best-selling book"The Inner Shrine" – Basil King

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentHonus Wagner leads Pittsburgh Pirates to World Series victory
  • Top headlineRobert Peary claims to reach the North Pole
  • Technology milestoneBakelite (first fully synthetic plastic) invented
  • Notable inventionBakelite plastic
  • World population~1.69B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWilliam Howard Taft
  • U.S. population88.8M

1909 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Edward Tatum's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19092026
Population88.8M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.