Bergey, David Hendricks WORLD OF MICROBIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY62•
Berg was named the Sam, Lula, and Jack Willson
Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford in 1970, and was chair-
man of the Department of Biochemistry there from 1969 to- He was also director of the Beckman Center for
Molecular and Genetic Medicine (1985), senior postdoctoral
fellow of the National Science Foundation (1961–68), and
nonresident fellow of the Salk Institute (1973–83). He was
elected to the advisory board of the Jane Coffin Childs
Foundation of Medical Research, serving from 1970 to 1980.
Other appointments include the chair of the scientific advisory
committee of the Whitehead Institute (1984–90) and of the
national advisory committee of the Human Genome Project
(1990). He was editor of Biochemistry and Biophysical
Research Communications (1959–68), and a trustee of
Rockefeller University (1990–92). He is a member of the
international advisory board, Basel Institute of Immunology.
Berg received many awards in addition to the Nobel
Prize, among them the American Chemical Society’s Eli Lilly
Prize in biochemistry (1959); the V. D. Mattia Award of the
Roche Institute of Molecular Biology (1972); the Albert
Lasker Basic Medical Research Award (1980); and the
National Medal of Science (1983). He is a fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a foreign mem-
ber of the Japanese Biochemistry Society and the Académie
des Sciences, France.
See alsoAsilomar conferences; Bacteriophage and bacterio-
phage typing; Immunodeficiency disease syndromes;
ImmunogeneticsBBergey, David HendricksERGEY, DAVIDHENDRICKS(1860-1937)
American bacteriologistDavid Hendricks Bergey was an American bacteriologist. He
was the primary author of Bergey’s Manual of Determinative
Bacteriology, which has been a fundamentally important ref-
erence book for the identification and classification of bacte-
riasince its publication in 1923.
Bergey was born in the state of Pennsylvania where he
remained his entire life. In his early years, Bergey was a
schoolteacher he taught in schools of Montgomery Country.
He left this occupation to attend the University of
Pennsylvania. In 1884 he receive both a B.S. and M.D.
degrees. From then until 1893 he was a practicing physician.
In 1893 he became a faculty member at his alma mater. The
following year he was appointed the Thomas A. Scott fellow
in the Laboratory of Hygiene.
In 1916, he received a doctor of public healthdegree.
His career at the university flourished. He was professor of
hygiene and bacteriology in the undergraduate and graduate
schools, and became director of the Laboratory of Hygiene in- He served as director and had other university appoint-
ments from 1929 until his retirement in 1932.
From 1932 until his death in 1937 he was director of
biological research at the National Drug Company in
Philadelphia.
During his years at the University of Pennsylvania,
Bergey was a prolific and varied researcher. His research
included tuberculosis, food preservatives, the engulfment of
particles and foreign organisms by immune cells (a phenome-
non termed phagocytosis), and the enhanced immune reaction
of an organism to an antigenic target (called anaphylaxis). He
was also responsible for determining the interrelations and dif-
ferences that helped identify the organisms in a class called
Schizomycetes.
This latter research activity also formed the basis for his
most well known accomplishment. In the early years of the
twentieth century Bergey became chair of an organizational
committee whose mandate was to devise a classification
scheme for all known bacteria, a scheme that could be used to
identify unknown bacteria based on various criteria (such as
Gram stain reaction, shape, appearance of colonies, and on a
variety of biochemical reactions). In 1923, he and four other
bacteriologists published the first edition of Bergey’s Manual
of Determinative Bacteriology.
The first three editions of the Manualwere published by
the Society of American Bacteriologists (now called the
American Society for Microbiology). During the preparation
of the fourth edition in 1934 it became apparent that the finan-
cial constraints of the Society were making publication of the
Manualdifficult. Subsequently, it was agreed by the Society
and Bergey that he would assume all rights, title and interest
in the Manual. In turn, an educational trust was created to
oversee and fund the publication of future editions of the
Manual. The Bergey’s Trust continues to the present day.
From the first edition to the present day, the Bergey’s
manual has continued to be updated and new revisions pub-
lished every few years. In addition to the Manual, Bergey pub-
lished the Handbook of Practical Hygienein 1899 and The
Principles of Hygienein 1901.See alsoHistory of public healthBERKELEY, REVERENDM. J.
(1803-1889)Berkeley, Reverend M. J.
British cleric and fungal researcher and classifierM.J. Berkeley lived in Britain during the nineteenth century.
An ordained minister, he is best known for his contributions to
the study and classification of fungi. He compiled a number of
volumes of literature on fungi. One of the best-known exam-
ples is the massive and well-illustrated Outlines of British
Fungology, which was published in 1860. In this volume,
Berkeley detailed a thousand species of fungi then known to
be native to the British Isles. He was involved active in chron-
icling the discoveries of others. As examples, he co-authored
a paper that described the findings of a United States–Japan
expedition that found many species of fungi in the North
Pacific in 1852–1853, and wrote several treatises on botanic
expeditions to New Zealand and Antarctica.
Another of Berkeley’s important contributions were
connected to the Irish potato famine. From 1846 to 1851, thewomi_B 5/6/03 1:09 PM Page 62