Rita R. ColwellBorn 23 Nov 1934.(née Rita Rossi) American microbiologist and as the 11th director of the National Science Foundation (4 Aug 1998), the first woman - and the first biologist since the advent of modern biotechnology - to head the NSF. In the 1960s, she became the first U.S. scientist to create a computer program that analyzed data related to the taxonomic classification of different strains of bacteria. This led to her revolutionary discovery that the strain of cholera bacteria that had been linked to the disease belonged to the same species as benign strains of cholera. With her team of researchers she later found that both the harmless and the disease-causing (toxin-producing) strains were found commonly in estuaries and coastal waters. |
