George D(avis) Snell - Work, Life, Reference

Immunogeneticist, born in Bradford, Massachusetts, USA. He taught zoology at Dartmouth (1929–30), then performed research at the University of Texas (1933–4), where his studies on mice first demonstrated the mutagenic effects of X-rays on mammals. He moved to Washington University (St Louis) (1933–4), then joined the Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME (1935). There, using inbred strains of mice, he discovered the genetic histocompatibility locus, a group of closely associated genes responsible for transplant acceptance. This breakthrough won him a share of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. After his retirement from Jackson (1968), he remained as a consultant and continued to contribute to scientific publications.

George Davis Snell (December 19, 1903 – June 6, 1996) was an American mouse geneticist and basic transplant immunologist.

Work

George Snell shared the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Baruj Benacerraf and Jean Dausset for their discoveries concerning "genetically determined structures on the cell surface that regulate immunological reactions". It was Snell who introduced the concept of H antigens."Snell's brilliant work in mice led to the discovery of HLA, the major histocompatibility complex, in humans (and all vertebrates) that is analogous to the H-2 complex in mice.

Life

George Snell was born in Bradford, Massachusetts, the youngest of three schildren.

On the recommendation of John Gerould, his genetics professor at Dartmouth, Snell did graduate work at Harvard University with William E.

Snell then spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas with H.J.

This experience "served to convince me that research was my real love," Snell wrote in his autobiography."If it was to be research, mouse genetics was the clear choice and the Jackson Laboratory, founded in 1929 by Dr. Clarence Cook Little, one of Castle's earlier students, almost the inevitable selection as a place to work."

In 1935 Snell joined the staff of the Jackson Lab in Bar Harbor on beautiful Mt.

Snell's father worked as a secretary for the local YMCA.

In 1988, he authored a substantial book, Search for a Rational Ethic, on the nature of ethics and the rules by which we live.

Snell died in Bar Harbor, Maine on June 6, 1996.

Reference

Les Prix Nobel.