Norman Wingate PirieBorn 1 Jul 1907; died 29 Mar 1997 at age 89. British biochemist and virologist who collaborated with Frederick Bawden to demonstrate that the genetic material found in viruses is RNA. Together they obtained about a dozen viruses, or strains of viruses, in semi-crystalline or even crystalline form, including tobacco mosaic virus (TMV). Pirie demonstrated that the preparations contained small amounts of phosphorus and showed conclusively that all contained ribonucleic acid (RNA). This contradicted the early views of Wendell Stanley (a later Nobel laureate), who believed viruses consisted entirely of protein. Bawden and Pirie realized that RNA might be the infective component of viruses; but they were unable to confirm this experimentally, and it was left until 1956 for others to establish. |
