Norton David Zinder (November 7, 1928 – February 3, 2012)[1] was an American biologist famous for his discovery of genetic transduction.
He led a lab at Rockefeller University until shortly before his death.
[3] Working as a graduate student with Joshua Lederberg,[4][5][6] Zinder discovered that a bacteriophage[7] can carry genes from one bacterium to another.
Zinder and Lederberg named this process of genetic exchange transduction.
Later, Zinder discovered the first bacteriophage that contained RNA as its genetic material.