Abstract
Julius Marmur (1926-1996) was born in Białystok, however, he spent most of his life in the USA, where he worked at leading research institutions, including Rockefeller University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Harvard University. His discoveries regarding DNA functioning today are the fundamental biochemical knowledge. Thanks to his work, we understand the mechanism native DNA thermal denaturation with the loss of biological activity, and the method of reassembling a transforming DNA. Julius Marmur also demonstrated that a single DNA strand (even labeled) can be combined with a strand of another homologous molecule, thus forming a biologically active double helix. For these discoveries, he was nominated with Paul Doty for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1972. Although 100 years after his birth, his scientific discoveries represented a major step towards the creation of recombinant DNA, transforming the way scientists understood DNA and how they could work with it in vitro.