The great biologist Seymour Benzer passed away yesterday. If you know Benzer, it’s probably through Jonathan Weiner’s masterful book, Time, Love, Memory Time, Love, Memory, which focused on how Benzer discovered the influence of genes on behavior in fruit flies. But Benzer was one of those rare scientists who had enough time in his life for more than one great project. Before Benzer turned to fruit flies, he studied E. coli. And in studying that wonderful microbe, he helped to figure out what genes are in the first place.

In the early 1950s Benzer gave up a career in physics for biology after reading Erwin Schrodinger’s provocative book, What Is Life? At the time, molecular