Aaron Novick

American scientist, considered one of the founders of molecular biology. He started the University of Oregon's Institute of Molecular Biology, believed to be the first of its kind in the world, in 1959. A graduate of the University of Chicago, he completed his doctorate in physical organic chemistry there in 1943, and then joined the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory. He later worked at its Los Alamos Laboratory, and witnessed the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945. He teamed up with Leo Szilard, who had secured a research professorship at the University of Chicago that allowed him to dabble in biology and the social sciences. The two men saw biology as a field that had not been explored as much as physics, and that was ready for scientific breakthroughs. They made considerable advances. They invented the chemostat, a device for regulating the growth rate of the microorganisms in a bioreactor, and developed methods for measuring the growth rate of bacteria. They discovered feedback inhibition, an important factor in processes such as growth and metabolism. Novick married Jane Graham, a 1945 University of Chicago alumna, in Chicago on 25 January 1948. They had two sons. In later life he was afflicted with Parkinson's disease. He died from pneumonia in Eugene, Oregon, on 21 December 2000, aged 81. Link to Wikipedia biography