Nobel Laureates Lost in 2013 Spurred Early Genetics

December 31, 2013 | With the lightning pace of genetic advances in recent years, it's easy to forget how long it took this scientific discipline to come to a boil. A sad reminder of the field's long development came this year with the death of Frederick Sanger, who in 1977 became the first person to sequence a genome. NPR remembers the contributions of Sanger and fellow Nobel laureates who passed away this year. NPR