Daniel Nathans was an American microbiologist. Daniel Nathans was born on October 30, 1928, in Wilmington, Delaware. He received a BS in Chemistry from the University of Delaware in 1950. He received his M.D. degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri in 1954. After getting an M. D. degree in 1954, Nathan went to the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York for an internship in medicine with Robert Loeb, a masterful clinician and medical scientist. Nathans served as President of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland from 1995 to 1996. In 1993, Dr. Nathans won the nation's highest scientific award, the National Medal of Science. He was also a member of the National Academy of Sciences.