Beadle, George Wells (1903-1989), an American geneticist, shared the 1958 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his discovery that genes act by regulating specific chemical processes. With Edward L. Tatum, he experimented with a bread mold and proved genes control chemical and enzymatic reactions in cells. From 1961 to 1968, he served as president of the University of Chicago.
Beadle was born on Oct. 22, 1903, in Wahoo, Nebraska. He died on June 9, 1989.
