Gunther S. Stent, a UC Berkeley molecular biologist who was a member of the key postwar group of scientists who solved the basic mysteries of the gene and how DNA functions, died June 12 at a retirement home in Haverford, Pa.
He was 84 and died from a massive staph infection that he had been fighting for several months.
Possessed of a restless intellect, Stent changed career directions at least twice, first abandoning molecular biology for the study of neurology and behavior -- becoming a leading expert on leeches in the process -- then becoming a noted historian and philosopher of science.
"Gunther is one of the leading intellectuals of the era, one of the last generalists," language and behavior expert John Searle of UC Berkeley said at a 2005 symposium honoring Stent. "He is a Renaissance man."
Stent himself had a simpler explanation: "I have a very short attention span. I get bored very quickly."
Stent was a member of the so-called phage group, a cluster of notable scientists centered on Max Delbruck of Caltech. Other members included Francis Crick, Renato Dulbecco, Alfred Hershey, Salvador Luria and James Watson.
All shared the view that bacteriophages -- tiny viruses that infect only bacteria -- provided the simplest model for studying the intricacies of DNA.
Stent got his introduction to phages when he visited Delbruck in 1948 in an effort to become a postdoc in his laboratory. The noted biologist offered him a position, asking if Stent wanted to work on phage.
"Yes, sir," Stent replied. "That's exactly what I want to work on, but could you refresh my memory as to just what phage is actually all about?"
At Caltech, he worked alongside Watson before the latter's move to Cambridge University, where he and Crick deciphered the structure of DNA.
Stent had no major scientific breakthrough of his own, but his work helped prove the structure deduced by the Cambridge pair.
In one series of experiments, for example, he incorporated radioactive phosphorus into the DNA of a phage. When the isotope decayed into sulfur, it would break the DNA chain, killing the phage.
By correlating the rate of phosphorus decay with the loss of phage activity, he demonstrated that DNA was double-helical, confirming Watson and Crick's structure, said Michael Botchan, co-chairman of Berkeley's department of molecular and cell biology.
