Date:21/06/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/06/21/stories/2008062160341700.htm

International

Gunther Stent dead

Berkeley (U.S.): Gunther Stent, who helped pioneer the field of molecular biology as one of the first scientists to confirm the structure of DNA, died recently. He was 84.

Stent died on June 12 of pneumonia at his home in Haverford, Pennsylvania, according to the University of California, Berkeley, where he served on the faculty for nearly 40 years.

The push to unlock the mysteries of human genetics in the years after World War II was led by the “Phage group,” a small collection of scientists that included Stent, James Watson and Francis Crick.

Stent was born in Berlin in 1924.

He escaped Nazi Germany in 1938 and joined his sister in Chicago. — AP