David Schlessinger

David Schlessinger (born September 20, 1936, in Toronto, Canada) is a Canadian-born American biochemist, microbiologist, and geneticist. He is known for his directorship of the development of the map of the X chromosome.

Biography His family moved from Toronto to Chicago in 1939. David Schlessinger graduated from Theodore Roosevelt High School in 1953. At the age of 16 he matriculated at the University of Chicago. According to Schlessinger, his most important achievement "as a graduate student was to develop the first in vitro system that could actually make some little bits of protein" — this system enabled Arthur Kornberg and other researchers to determine the molecular mechanisms of the genetic code. As a graduate student he spent some time at California Institute of Technology, where he worked on an experiment that failed. However, at Caltech he did meet a woman who was a plant physiologist and became his wife in 1960. Schlessinger's Ph.D. thesis "Ribosomes from Escheria coli" was supervised by James Watson.

In 1969 he received the Eli Lilly and Company-Elanco Research Award.

Schlessinger and his wife have two daughters and six grandchildren.

Selected publications