Edward Lawrie Tatum

Tatum first married June Alton on 28 June 1934. The couple had two daughters, Margaret and Barbara. They divorced sometime in 1956.

On 16 December 1956, Tatum married Viola Kanter. They remained married until her death on 21 April 1974. Later that year, he tied the knot for the third time and married Elsie Bergland. They remained married until his death shortly after.

Tatum was a heavy smoker and suffered from chronic emphysema. He died on 7 November 1975, from heart failure.

Edward Lawrie Tatum was born on 14 December 1909, at Boulder, Colorado. At the time of his birth, his father, Arthur Lawrie Tatum, was an instructor in chemistry at the University of Colorado. Later he earned his degrees and became a Professor of Pharmacology.

Edward’s mother, Mabel Webb Tatum, died while he was a child. His father later married Carla Harriman. Edward was the first surviving son of his parents. His twin, Elwood, died soon after the birth. He had two younger siblings; a brother named Howard J. Tatum and a sister named Besse C Tatum.

For greater part of his life, Arthur held different teaching positions in different universities in the Midwest. Therefore, while Edward was growing up, the family was moving from place to place. However, they always had a scientific environment at home, which helped grow his aptitude towards science.

From 1918 to 1928, Arthur was engaged at the University of Chicago. During this period, Edward studied at the University of Chicago Laboratory School and graduated from there in and around 1926.

Afterwards, Edward enrolled at the University of Chicago. But when after two years, his father moved to the University of Wisconsin Medical School as Professor of Pharmacology Edward shifted with him.

After receiving his PhD, Edward Tatum remained at the University of Wisconsin for a year and then in 1935, he went to Holland for his postdoctoral work receiving a General Education Fellowship at the University of Utrecht. There he worked on identifying growth factors in staphylocci, but was not very successful.

Subsequently, he returned to the University of Wisconsin and remained there till 1937. Sometime now, he was invited by Professor George W. Beadles to join him in his work on Drosophila at the University of Stanford, California.

Tatum also got an offer to work on the microbiology of butter. Although his father wanted him to take that up, Tatum joined Beadle’s team at the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Stanford as Research Associate without teaching responsibility, in 1937.

He first concentrated on extracting pigments precursors from the larvae of Drosophila. By 1941, he was successful in isolating the V+ hormone in a crystalline state from bacterial culture and identified it as kynurenine.

Unfortunately, Adolf Butenand, who was working on this independently, preceded him in this discovery and so Tatum received no credit for his work. Jarred by this experience he and Beadle decided to look for another model and chose Neurospora crassa.

Tatum is best remembered for his work with George W. Beadle on Neurospora. After observing innumerable mutants over a long period, they came to the conclusion that “A single gene may be considered to be concerned with the primary control of a specific chemical reaction”. Their theory, later dubbed as ‘one gene-one enzyme hypothesis’, elped create the field of molecular genetics.

Tatum is also remembered for his work on bacteria at the University of Yale. It was largely because of his work, that bacteria began to be considered as the main source of information for gaining insight into how biochemical process is controlled by genetics.