Paul Berg

Paul Berg was an American biochemist at Stanford University who became the first scientist to construct a molecule containing DNA joined together from two different species, a technique that founded recombinant DNA technology. Using enzymes to cut and splice DNA from a bacterial virus with DNA from another source, Berg demonstrated in the early 1970s that genetic material from unrelated organisms could be combined into a single functioning molecule, opening the way to genetic engineering as a practical laboratory discipline. He received the 1980 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, shared with Walter Gilbert and Frederick Sanger, for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids with particular regard to recombinant DNA. Concerned about the safety implications of the new technology he had helped create, Berg organized the 1975 Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, at which researchers agreed on voluntary safety guidelines that shaped how the field regulated itself in its early years. He spent most of his career at Stanford, where he taught biochemistry from 1959 to 2000 and directed the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine from 1985 to 2000.