Walter Nelson-Rees
American scientist

Walter Nelson-Rees

The basics
Quick facts
Intro
American scientist
Gender:
Male
Work field:
Birth:
11 January 1929
Death:
23 January 2009(San Francisco)
Biography menu
Menu

Jump to

Introduction Biography
The details
Biography

Introduction

Walter Nelson-Rees (11 January 1929 – 23 January 2009) was a cell culture worker and cytogeneticist who helped expose the problem of cross-contamination of cell lines. He used chromosome banding to show that many immortal cell lines, previously thought to be unique, were actually HeLa cell lines. The HeLa cells had contaminated and overgrown the other cell lines.

Biography

He was born on January 11, 1929. Nelson-Rees retired in 1980. In 2005 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award, from the Society for In Vitro Biology (SIVB).

He died on January 23, 2009 in San Francisco, California from complications from a broken hip.