The characterization of restriction endonucleases: the work of Hamilton Smith.

Hamilton Othanel Smith was born in 1931 in New York City. In 1937, he and his family moved to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, because his father had joined the faculty of the department of education at the University of Illinois. As a boy, Smith was interested in chemistry, electricity, and electronics, and he spent many hours with his brother in their basement laboratory, which was stocked with supplies purchased from their paper route earnings. Smith attended a small college preparatory school called the University Laboratory High School and graduated in 3 years largely due to his science teacher who allowed him to complete chemistry and physics during the summer. After finishing high school, Smith enrolled at the University of Illinois, majoring in mathematics. During his sophomore year, his brother showed him a book on mathematical modeling of central nervous system circuits by Nicolas Rashevsky. This caught his interest, and after transferring to the University of California, Berkeley, Smith immersed himself in courses in cell physiology, biochemistry, and biology. A guest lecture by Journal of Biological Chemistry (JBC) Classic author George Wald (1) describing his studies of retinal biochemistry soon converted Smith into a devoted student of visual physiology and eventually motivated him to apply to medical school. In 1952, Smith began his studies at the Johns Hopkins University Medical School. He received his M.D. 4 years later and went to Barnes Hospital in St. Louis for a medical internship. However, in 1957, Smith was called up in the Doctor Draft and joined the U.S. Navy. He finished his Navy service in 1959 and moved to Detroit to begin a medical residency training at the Henry Ford Hospital. There he became interested in bacteriophage and decided that this would be the focus of his research. So, in 1962, Smith began his research career with Myron Levine in the department of human genetics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He and Levine carried out a series of studies demonstrating the sequential action of the phage P22 C-genes, which controlled Hamilton O. Smith THE JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY Vol. 285, No. 3, Issue of January 15, p. e2, 2010 © 2010 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc. Printed in U.S.A.