07-07-2025
Franklin W. Stahl, 95, Dies; Helped Create a ‘Beautiful' DNA Experiment
Franklin W. Stahl, a molecular biologist who helped create a methodology to confirm how DNA replicates that was so elegant it has been remembered for more than five decades as 'the most beautiful experiment in biology,' died on April 2 at his home in Eugene, Ore. He was 95.
The cause was congestive heart failure, his son Andy Stahl said. His death was not widely reported at the time, and there was no announcement about it from the University of Oregon in Eugene, where he was a professor and researcher.
At his death, Dr. Stahl was an emeritus professor of molecular biology and genetics at the university's Institute of Molecular Biology. He had been at the university since 1959.
Dr. Stahl's name and that of his collaborator, Matthew Meselson, were immortalized by the Meselson-Stahl Experiment, which is referenced in biology textbooks and taught in molecular genetics courses worldwide. In 2015, 'Helix Spirals,' a musical tribute to the experiment, was composed by Augusta Read Thomas and performed by a string quartet in Boston.
The two biologists proved a theory advanced by the Nobel Prize winners James Watson and Francis Crick, who discovered DNA's helical structure in 1953. Watson and Crick posited in the journal Nature that DNA replicates in a so-called semi-conservative fashion.
In 1958, Dr. Meselson and Dr. Stahl, postdoctoral fellows in Linus Pauling's laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., proved that Watson and Crick were correct, by using an experiment that was celebrated for its design, execution and results.
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