Walter Goad
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Walter Goad (1925–2000) was a nuclear physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. During the 1960s, Goad turned his attention from physics to biology and he is best known for his contributions to the founding of GenBank, the most widely used repository for DNA sequence data.
Goad was born to working class parents in Marlow, Georgia, in 1925. Growing up during the Depression, his family moved frequently in search of work. When he was twelve years old, Goad began to work for a radio repairman and soon after obtained the qualification to work as an engineer at a local radio station.[1]
In 1941, Goad moved from the South to Schenectady, New York, to take up a job at new radio station. The owner of the station sponsored Goad to attend Union College where he studied physics and also enrolled in the V-12 Navy College Training Program.[1]
Graduating in the spring of 1945, Goad was assigned to a Navy ship in Manila just as World War II was coming to an end. On his discharge in June 1946, Goad began graduate studies in the physics department at the University of California at Berkeley. The following year he transferred to Duke University where he began to work on a PhD in cosmic ray physics under the supervision of Lothar Nordheim.[1]
