Martin Henry Dawson (6 August 1896 – 27 April 1945) was a Canadian researcher who made important contributions in the fields of infectious diseases.
Dawson's studies on the nature and treatment of arthritis made him a recognized authority in this disorder.
[2][3] After he had graduated Dalhousie University in Halifax with a BA in 1916 he started serving in the Canadian forces in the First World War.
Over Avery's strong objections, Dawson recreated Fred Griffith's discovery that a soluble substance from dead bacteria of one type can effect a repeatable and inheritable change in bacteria of another type[4] – a process Dawson termed transformation in his six articles on the subject – in which he was the first person in history to put the substance to work in a test tube and even to partially extract it.
[citation needed] The phrase stuck and eventually Avery along with Colin Munro MacLeod proved the substance was in fact DNA.