Background
Doty was born in Charleston, West Virginia.
chemist engineer university professor
Doty was born in Charleston, West Virginia.
He graduated from Penn State University in 1941 and took his doctorate from Columbia University under Joseph Edward Mayer.
From 1943 to 1945, he was at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. In 1954, he helped to recruit James Watson to the Harvard Biolabs, the home of the Biology Department, as an assistant professor In 1960, while working in Doty"s lab, Julius Marmur discovered the reversible hybridization of deoxyribonucleic acid. Doty later helped to found the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and became its first chairman in 1968.
His scientific work involved the characterization of biopolymers such as deoxyribonucleic acid, proteins and collagen by optical methods such as circular dichroism and light scattering.
In his 42 years at Harvard, he supervised the research of 44 students, 10 of whom have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. As a graduate student, he worked on the Manhattan project, which led to his lifelong involvement in activities aiming to avert nuclear war.
He was involved for many years in the Pugwash Conferences.
National Academy of Sciences]
He joined the chemistry department Harvard University in 1948 and became a member of the National Academy of Science in 1957. After retirement he continued to work on Russian-American scientific relations and was board member of George Soros" International Science Foundation that provided support to Russian scientists in the 1990s.