Frederick Griffith

Fred Griffith

Frederick Griffith (1879 - 1941) British public health scientist, who in 1927 conducted the now famous experiment, which demonstrated the phenomenon of bacterial transformation, then attributed to the presence of a transforming principle, and later proved by Oswald Avery, Colin MacCleod and Maclyn Mccarty as genetic DNA. In what is now known as the Griffith experiment, Frederick Griffith demonstrated conclusively that the non-pathogenic R strain of the pneumococcus can be induced to transform into the pathogenic S strain. It was said that Griffith and his colleague-friend William Scott could do more with a kerosene tin and primus stove than most men could with a palace, because of the fact that the laboratory conditions they worked in were primitive, and yet their research was outstanding. Griffith is supposed to have died along with his friend Scott in his apartment amid an air raid during WW II's London Blitz.