George Wells Beadle (1903-1989), US biochemist. Beadle was the son of a farmer and went to the College of Agriculture, Nebraska, before obtaining his science degree from the University of Nebraska in 1926. His early work was on plant science and crop hybrids, leading to his PhD in 1931. In 1935 he worked in Paris, France, on fly genetics, the start of the work that would show the biochemical basis of genetics. This work was completed with Tatum while Beadle was Professor of Genetics at Stanford University, USA, winning them half of the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (the other half went to Lederberg for other work).