Joshua Lederberg was born in New Jersey in 1925 and obtained his B.A. with honors in zoology at Colombia University. In 1947, Lederberg was appointed to the position of Assistant Professor of Genetics at the University of Wisconsin. He became a full professor in 1954. Stanford University Medical School entrusted to him the organization of its Department of Genetics and appointed him professor and executive head in 1959. Lederberg's lifelong research, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1958 at the age of thirty-three, was in genetic structure and function in micro-organisms. He was, however, also actively involved in artificial intelligence research, in computer science, and in NASA's experimental programs seeking life on the planet Mars. Lederberg died in 2008 at the age of eighty-two. In 2012, and in Lederberg's honor, a crater was named after him on Mars. There was one specific issue – a very dark and disturbing one – that Lederberg was particularly concerned about. It was an