Nossal was born to Dorothy Goldman in
Fall River, Massachusetts and raised in
Newton, Massachusetts and
Syracuse, New York. She completed a bachelor's degree at
Cornell University in 1958 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry at the
University of Michigan in 1964.
G. Robert Greenberg was her doctoral advisor. She joined the NIDDK laboratory of biochemical pharmacology then under the direction of
Herbert Tabor. Nossal was a leader in the study of
DNA replication. Nossal's work focused on DNA replication using simple T4
bacteriophage system in
E. coli. By using this simple phage model, she elucidated biochemical and molecular mechanisms universally required for
DNA synthesis. She was married to physicist
Ralph J. Nossal. They had three children. Nossal died of cancer on September 28, 2006, age 69, in her home in
Bethesda, Maryland. == References ==