Martha Chase

Martha Chase was born on 30 November 1927 in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and died on 8 August 2003 in Lorain, Ohio. She worked as a laboratory assistant to Alfred Hershey at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's genetics laboratory on Long Island, and in 1952 the two of them labeled a bacteriophage's protein coat with radioactive sulfur and its DNA with radioactive phosphorus, then used a kitchen blender to shear the phage bodies from the bacteria they had infected. The DNA, not the protein, had entered the bacterial cells, evidence that DNA carries genetic information. Chase was listed as co-author of the resulting paper, though her contribution went largely unrecognized during her lifetime.