Biography

Jeanne Guillemin was born on March 6, 1943 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Jeanne was married to Matthew Meselson and Sidewalk Sam. Jeanne died on November 15, 2019 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

She received a bachelor's degree in social psychology from Harvard and a PhD in sociology and anthropology from Brandeis University.

She taught at Boston College and worked with the MIT Security Studies Program.

She and Matthew Meselson led field research revealing that the 1979 anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk, USSR (now Yekaterinburg) was not caused by infected beef, as the Soviet government officially announced. It was the result of an accident at a laboratory where the Soviet military conducted research on biological weapons in violation of an international treaty. She became a sought-after authority on biological warfare, and wrote several books on the subject.