Edward Lawrie Tatum (December 14, 1909 – November 5, 1975) was an American geneticist. He shared half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958 with George Beadle for showing that genes control individual steps in metabolism. The other half of that year's award went to Joshua Lederberg. to Arthur L. Tatum and Mabel Webb Tatum. Arthur L. Tatum was a chemistry professor, who by 1925 was a professor of pharmacology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. before transferring to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he received his BA in 1931 and PhD in 1934. His dissertation was Studies in the biochemistry of microorganisms (1934). His last wife Elsie Bergland died in 1998.
Research
Tatum and Beadle carried out pioneering studies of biochemical mutations in Neurospora, published in 1941. Their work provided a prototype of the investigation of gene action
Tatum spent his career studying biosynthetic pathways and the genetics of bacteria. An active area of research in his laboratory was to understand the basis of Tryptophan biosynthesis in Escherichia coli. Tatum and his student Joshua Lederberg showed that E. coli could share genetic information through recombination.
- 1958, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (with George Beadle and Joshua Lederberg) for showing that genes control individual steps in metabolism.
- 1957, Member, American Philosophical Society,
- 1952, Member, United States National Academy of Sciences,