Esther Lederberg was marginalized throughout her academic and professional career because she was a woman in a male dominated scientific field during a time when sociocultural norms devalued women’s professional contributions. This led to her being discouraged from entering the field of biology, left uncredited for her work, and forced to fight to maintain her position in science. Lederberg deserves recognition for her contributions to biology because, through her discoveries of lambda phage, fertility factor F, replica plating and the lysogenicity of Escherichia coli, she laid the groundwork for genetic inheritance in bacteria, gene regulation, and genetic recombination.