Remembrance of Ernest St. John Simms written by Julian B. Fleischman and David Schlessinger, 1984.

David Schlessinger was born in Toronto, Canada. After receiving his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago in 1956, Schlessinger received his doctoral degree from Harvard University in 1960, where he worked for DNA co-discoverer and Nobel laureate James Watson.

Following two years of postdoctoral training at the Pasteur Institute with another laureate, Jacques Monod, Schlessinger joined Washington University, where he served as professor of molecular microbiology, genetics and microbiology in medicine.

In 1997 he moved to the National Institutes of Health where he is an NIH Distinguished Investigator at the Laboratory of Genetics at the National Institute on Aging (NIA). In 2017 he received the Washington University Medical Center Alumni Association Distinguished Service Award.