Most of us are taught in high school biology that one gene provides the code for the production of one protein. The scientist who co-discovered that fact was a Nebraska native and was awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
George Wells Beadle was born in 1903 in Wahoo, Nebraska. His parents were farmers, a profession he thought he would take up until a high school teacher convinced him to go to college (Source).
Beadle graduated in 1926 with a bachelor’s degree and in 1927 with his master’s degree. He then went on to Cornell for his Ph.