George Davis Snell

George Davis Snell (December 19, 1903 – June 6, 1996) was an American mouse geneticist and basic transplant immunologist.

Snell won the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 1978. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1980 with Baruj Benacerraf and Jean Dausset. They won it "for their discoveries concerning genetically determined structures on the cell surface that regulate immunological reactions". Snell specifically "discovered the genetic factors that determine the possibilities of transplanting tissue from one individual to another. It was Snell who introduced the concept of H antigens."

Snell was born on December 19, 1903 in Bradford, Massachusetts. He was the youngest of three children. In 1926, Snell received a Bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College. After recommendation by John Gerould, his genetics professor at Dartmouth, Snell completed graduate work at Harvard University where he worked with William E. Castle. In 1930, Snell earned his PhD from Harvard. After he earned his PhD, he worked at Brown University from 1930 to 1931. After he left, he spent two years at the University of Texas as a postdoctoral fellow. He worked with H. J. Muller, a pioneer of radiation genetics (and later, a Nobel Prize winner). Snell worked at WUSTL as a teacher from 1933 to 1934. After he had some short stints as a teacher, Snell joined the Jackson Laboratory staff in Bar Harbor, Maine and spent the rest of his life there. He died on June 6, 1996 in Bar Harbor, Maine.

References

Category:1903 births
Category:1996 deaths
Category:American geneticists
Category:American Nobel Prize winners
Category:Harvard University alumni
Category:American immunologists
Category:Scientists from Maine
Category:Scientists from Massachusetts
Category:Wolf Prize winners
Category:Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine winners