Hamilton O. Smith shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with fellow biologists Werner Arber and Daniel Nathans for the set of linked discoveries that started off the boom in biotechnology. Because of these discoveries, researchers can more easily elucidate the structure and coding of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules (the basic genetic map of an organism), and they hope to correct many genetic illnesses in the future. It is also possible to design new organisms, a controversial but potentially beneficial technology. Smith purified and explained the activity of the first restriction enzyme, which became the principal tool used by genetic engineers to selectively cut up DNA. (Arber had linked restriction and modification to DNA, and predicted the existence of restriction enzymes. Nathans, under Smith's encouragement at Johns Hopkins, developed techniques that enabled their practical use.)

Hamilton Othanel Smith was born in New York City, to Bunnie (Othanel...