She is an ignored female scientist. Esther Lederberg made notable contributions to the scientific world in the field of microbiology and microbial genetics. She developed a technique called, “replica plating”. She maintained, named, and distributed plasmids of many types, including those coding for antibiotic resistance, heavy metal resistance, virulence, conjugation, colicins, transposons, and other unknown factors. She discovered lambda phage and did early research on the relationship between transduction and lambda phage lysogeny.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1958 was divided; one half jointly to George Wells Beadle and Edward Lawrie Tatum, but Lederberg was not awarded, despite her notable contribution.