Harrison Echols

Early life and education Harrison Echols was born in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1933, and attended the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia. He graduated in 1955 from the University of Virginia, where his grandfather William Holding Echols had been an influential professor of mathematics. He had initially intended to become a writer but ultimately completed his BA, MA, and PhD in physics.

He earned his PhD in 1959 from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he would subsequently return as a professor the following year.

Echols was an accomplished tennis player. He played tennis at University of Virginia and won multiple trophies at a Madison, Wisconsin tournament in 1961. Mark Ptashne recounts a tennis match against Echols:

The Hatch Echols Memorial Tennis Tournament is held in his honor every year at the Molecular Genetics of Bacteria and Phages Meeting at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Echols died of lung cancer on April 11, 1993, in Berkeley, California.

Selected works Operators and Promoters: The Story of Molecular Biology and Its Creators (written 1986–1992, published 2001), a narrative history of molecular biology, edited by Carol Gross after Echols's death and published posthumously