Martha Chase, 75; Used a Kitchen Blender to Help Prove the Role of DNA

Martha Chase, 75, a researcher who in her early 20s became part of one of the most famous DNA experiments ever conducted, the so-called “blender experiment,” died Aug. 8 of pneumonia at a hospital in Lorain, Ohio, according to her guardian and lawyer, Brent English of Cleveland. Chase had been suffering from dementia for many years.

Chase and biologist Alfred D. Hershey, working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, N.Y., used an ordinary Waring kitchen blender to discover which part of the virus, the DNA or the protein, carries inherited information.

In 1969, Hershey, a chemist, won the Nobel Prize for showing that DNA is the carrier of genetic information.

Chase later did graduate studies in biology at USC, where she received a postdoctoral degree in 1964 before returning to Ohio.