Oswald Avery

Canadian-American physician and researcher (1877–1955) whose 1944 work with Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty identified DNA — not protein — as the bacterial transforming principle, the first strong evidence that genes are made of nucleic acid. The finding was correct but largely set aside for years, because the field could not yet connect it to accepted knowledge.

Matters to this vault as the anchor case of Stent's prematurity criterion: Avery's DNA discovery is the paradigm example Stent's whole concept is built and measured against, becoming "connectable" to canonical knowledge only after Hershey and Chase's 1952 phage experiment. He is the calibration point for the vault's delayed-vindication cluster.

References

• claim-stent-prematurity-exemplars-avery-mendel-polanyi-are-vindicated-discoveries · claim-stent-prematurity-covers-neglected-not-contested-ideas · claim-stent-here-and-now-prematurity-covers-unresolved-claims
• Captures: 2026-07-11-hop-embedding-false-friend-hawks-jeffress (first mention), 2026-08-31-verify-gunther-stents-prematurity-definition-and-scope-condition (primary read)