Excerpt from Dr. Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg's PhD Dissertation
"GENETIC CONTROL OF MUTABILITY IN THE BACTERIUM Escherichia COLI"
University of Wisconsin, 1950

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A precise understanding of how "spontaneous mutations" arise is a very important issue in genetics. The exact meaning of "spontaneous mutation" was central to Dr. Esther Lederberg's doctoral thesis. Different views about what "spontaneous mutation" meant were held by different researchers, such as Drs. Hinschelwood, Jacques Monod, Luria, Delbrück, Lwoff, etc. However, Joshua Lederberg (who asked Esther to explain spontaneous mutation to him^*), held the same views that he learned from his wife and co-researcher, Dr. Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg. The views held by the Lederbergs became the basis of the technique of replica plating developed primarily by Dr. Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg (1952).

^* As told by Esther M. Lederberg to Matthew Simon.