Daniel Koshland Jr.; Biochemist Led Journal Science

Dr. Koshland found science more fascinating than denim, especially after reading Paul de Kruif's "Microbe Hunters" and Sinclair Lewis's "Arrowsmith," he said in a 2004 interview with the National Academy of Sciences.

He graduated from Berkeley in 1941 but was turned down for military service because of poor eyesight. A teacher recommended that he go to the University of Chicago, and later, Oak Ridge, Tenn., to join physicist Glenn Seaborg, who was working on the Manhattan Project.

The young scientist joined the team; his work involved the purification of plutonium for the construction of the first plutonium-based fission bomb.

Dr. Koshland received a doctorate in organic chemistry in 1949 from the University of Chicago. After two postdoctoral years at Harvard University, he and his wife, Marian, moved to Long Island to work at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where they remained until 1965, when he was recruited to Berkeley.

Dr. Koshland, who was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1966, received the National Medal of Science in 1990, a Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science in 1998 and numerous other honors.

He donated money to Berkeley for a bioscience and natural resources library, which was named for his wife. He also endowed a science center at Haverford College, which his two sons attended.

His gift to the National Academy of Sciences for the Washington museum was made to increase the public understanding of science. He described it as "a little gem," rather than a big, comprehensive institution.

"We wanted to explain science a little more. We wanted to show how science works, the science behind the headlines," he told The Washington Post when the gift was announced.

His first wife, to whom he was married 52 years, died in 1997.

Survivors include his wife of seven years, Yvonne Cyr San Jule Koshland of Lafayette, Calif.; five children from his first marriage, James Koshland of Atherton, Calif., Douglas Koshland of Baltimore, Ellen Koshland of Melbourne, Australia, Phyllis Koshland of Paris and Gail Koshland of Tucson; three stepchildren; two sisters; 21 grandchildren; and 18 great-grandchildren.