http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/BB/B/B/Q/C/ · Public domain

At 33, Lederberg won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering that bacteria can swap genes through direct contact — bacterial conjugation — work done with his wife Esther, whose contributions went uncredited at the time. He later turned to artificial intelligence, building Dendral, an early expert system for identifying chemical structures, and helped shape NASA's search for life on Mars, making him one of the rare scientists to leave a mark on both molecular biology and computing.