1905-

American Biochemist

Erwin Chargaff has been a pioneer in the study of the chemical nature of nucleic acids. Chargaff's work proved that, contrary to the prevailing views about nucleic acids in the 1940s, DNA was actually a complex and highly variable molecule that could serve as the genetic material. He also established the relationships, now known as "Chargaff's rules," among the four bases found in DNA.

Chargaff was born in 1905 in Czernowitz, which at the time was a provincial capital of the Austrian monarchy. His parents, Hermann Chargaff and Rosa Silberstein Chargaff, had been moderately well off, but they were financially ruined during the Great Inflation after World War I. As a child, Chargaff was a voracious and eclectic reader. In 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, his family was forced to move to Vienna to avoid the Russian occupation of Czernowitz. Chargaff received...