Background

Ruth Sager was born on February 7, 1918, in Chicago, Illinois, United States. She was one of three girls in her family. Her father, Leon B. Sager, worked as an advertising executive, while her mother, Deborah (Borovik) Sager, maintained an interest in academics and intellectual discourse.

After Ruth's birth, her mother died from the influenza epidemic of the time, and Sager and her sisters, Esther and Naomi, were raised by their step mother Hannah.

Education

As a child, Sager didn't show any particular interest in science. At the age of sixteen, she finished New Trier High School and entered the University of Chicago, which required its students to take a diverse schedule of liberal arts classes. Sager happened into an undergraduate survey course on biology, sparking her interest in the field.

In 1938, she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Chicago. After a brief vacation from education, Ruth enrolled at Rutgers University and studied plant physiology, receiving a Master of Science degree in 1944. Sager then continued her graduate work in genetics at Columbia University and in 1946, she was awarded a fellowship to study under a botanist Marcus Rhoades. In 1948, she received her Doctor of Philosophy degree from Columbia University.

In 1994, Ruth was made an Alumna of the Year of the University of Chicago.

Career

In 1949, Sager was named a Merck Fellow by the National Research Council and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Rockefeller Institute (present-day Rockefeller University) on the chloroplast from 1949 until 1951 in the laboratory of Sam Granick. In 1951, Ruth joined the research staff of the Rockefeller Institute’s biochemistry division as an assistant, working at first in conjunction with Yoshihiro Tsubo.

At the Rockefeller Institute’s biochemistry division, Ruth began her work, challenging the prevailing scientific idea, that only the chromosomal genes played a significant role in genetics. Unlike many of her colleagues of the time, Sager speculated, that genes, which lay outside the chromosomes, behave in a manner, akin to that of chromosomal genes. In 1953, Sager uncovered hard data to support this theory. She was studying heredity in Chlamydomonas, an alga, found in muddy ponds, when she noted, that a gene outside the chromosomes was necessary for the alga to survive in water, containing streptomycin, an antimicrobial drug. Although the plant, which Sager nicknamed "Clammy" — normally reproduced asexually, Sager discovered, that she could force it to reproduce sexually by withholding nitrogen from its environment. Using this tactic, Sager managed to cross male and females via sexual fertilization. If either of the genitors had the streptomycin-resistant gene, Sager showed, the offspring exhibited it as well, providing definitive proof, that this non-chromosomal trait was transmitted genetically.

During the time, when Ruth studied "Clammy", she switched institutional affiliations, taking a post as a research associate in Columbia University’s zoology department in 1955. The Public Health Service and National Science Foundations supported her work. In 1960, Sager publicized the results of her non-chromosomal genetics research in the first Gilbert Morgan Smith Memorial Lecture at Stanford University and a few months later in Philadelphia at the Society of American Bacteriologists. Toward the end of the year, her observations were published in Science magazine.

As Ruth continued her studies, she expanded her knowledge of the workings of non-chromosomal genes. Sager’s further work showed, that when the streptomycin-resistant alga mutated, these mutations occurred only in the non-chromosomal genes. She also theorized, that non-chromosomal genes differed greatly from their chromosomal counterparts in the way they imparted hereditary information between generations. Sager's research led her to speculate, that non-chromosomal genes may evolve before the more common DNA chromosomes and that they may represent more closely early cellular life.

Sager continued announcing the results of her research at national and international gatherings of scientists. In 1960, Columbia University promoted her to the position of senior research associate, a post she held till 1966.

In 1963, Ruth travelled to the Hague to talk about her work, and the following year, she lectured in Edinburgh on non-chromosomal genes. In 1966, she accepted an offer to become a professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York. She remained there for nine years, spending the academic year of 1972 to 1973 abroad at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratory in London. In 1975, Harvard University’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute appointed Sager a professor of cellular genetics and head the Institute’s Division of Cancer Genetics. Between 1979 and 1981, Ruth was a fellow and member of the Board of Science at the University of Edinburgh.

In the past twenty years of her life, Sager’s work centered on a variety of issues, relating to cancer, such as tumor suppressor genes, breast cancer and the genetic means, by which cancer multiplies. Along with her colleagues at the Dana Farber Institute, Sager researched the means, by which cancer multiplies and grows in an attempt to understand and halt the mechanism of the deadly disease. She likened the growth of cancer to Darwinian evolution in that cancer cells lose growth control and display chromosome instability. In 1983, Ruth told reporter Anna Christensen, that if researchers discover a way to prevent the chromosomal rearrangements, "we would have a potent weapon against cancer". Later, she speculated, that tumor suppressor genes may be the secret to halting cancer growth.

During the last years of her life, Sager continued to publish and serve on numerous scientific panels. In 1992, she offered scientific testimony at hearings of the Breast Cancer Coalition.

On March 29, 1997, Sager died of cancer. At her death, she was chief of cancer genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, which is affiliated with the Harvard Medical School.

Achievements

• Ruth Sager gained prominence as a geneticist, whose research accomplishments included discovering a separate genetic system outside the cell nucleus, that influences heredity; devising the first human cell lines and cultures, that enabled comparison of normal cells and cancer cells; proposing and uncovering the role of multiple and accelerated mutations in the evolution of cancer cells; proposing, that genetic defects could be corrected by transferring DNA into cells; discovering many insights about the mechanics of genetic inheritance and establishing the basis for in vitro-inherited drug resistance.
  
  During her career, Ruth received several awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972, Outstanding Investigator Award in 1985 and Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal in 1988.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Cytoplasmic Genes and Organelles

    (The book "Cytoplasmic Genes and Organelles" is about cyto...)

    1972
  • Cell Heredity 1961

Views

Quotations: "Science is a way of life. I think it all comes from the inside. It really gets to the very core of your existence. It is much like being an artist or a dancer. It's something, that demands everything from you, that you are capable of."

"I have always been intrigued by the physicists' approach to scientific inquiry, particularly in the fact, that the way to find out something really new is to question the basic tenet of existing theory."

Membership

Ruth was a member of the Genetics Society of America, American Society of Bacteriologists, New York Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Society of Biological Chemists (present-day American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology), American Association for Cancer Research, American Society of Human Genetics, American Society for Cell Biology, Sigma Xi and others.

• 

  fellow

  National Academy of Sciences , United States

  1977

• 

  fellow

  American Academy of Arts and Sciences , United States

  1979

Personality

Ruth was an avid collector of modern art.

Connections

In 1944, Ruth married Seymour Melman, an economist. Later, in 1973, she married Arthur Pardee.

Father:

Leon B. Sager

Mother:

Deborah (Borovik) Sager

Second husband:

Arthur Pardee

First husband:

Seymour Melman

Sister:

Esther Sager

Sister:

Naomi Sager

mentor:

Marcus Rhoades