Vernon M. Ingram, currently the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been referred to as "The father of molecular medicine." While he has provided a large amount of important research in the field of molecular biology as it relates to the diseases process, he is most famous for his work on sickle cell anemia.

Just prior to 1956, when Ingram published the first of his two papers in Naturedealing with the genetic basis of sickle cell anemia, it was known that the disease resulted from a defect in hemoglobin, but no one understood what caused the change in hemoglobin. By combining the processes of gel electrophoresis and paper chromatography, Ingram was able to overcome technological difficulties and demonstrate that there was a genetic mutation in the abnormal hemoglobin that caused the sickle-shape. This was the first demonstrated instance of a...