Margaret Oakley Dayhoff was a researcher in the United States during the twentieth century who studied physical chemistry and the application of computers to biological problems such as the analysis of protein structure and function. Proteins are molecules that perform work in cells and are made up of subunits called amino acids arranged in a particular sequence. In the 1960s, researchers were cataloguing new protein sequences at an accelerating rate, and a database did not yet exist to contain them. In response, Dayhoff collected and made available all known protein sequences in her book Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure and later in the electronic database called the Protein Sequence Database. Her work on data collection provided the foundation for UniProt and GenBank, which, as of 2026, are international and free databases of all known protein and nucleic-acid sequences, respectively. Through the databases and computer programs she created, Dayhoff provided researchers the tools they needed to better understand the evolutionary relationships among all biological life.

The National Biomedical Research Foundation, or NBRF, was a non-profit institution in Washington, DC, that explored the intersection between computing and biomedical research. Robert Ledley, a researcher with a background in dentistry, mathematics, and engineering, established the NBRF in 1960. The NBRF employed engineers and scientists, including its former associate director Margaret Oakley Dayhoff, a physical chemistry researcher who held that position until her death in 1983. Dayhoff and other researchers at the NBRF produced the Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure, which was a collection of protein sequences and analyses that served as a common resource for studying protein function and evolution. From the mid-twentieth century to the early twenty-first century in the United States, the NBRF contributed to the field of biomedical computing by developing databases, software, and instruments, including the first whole-body computed tomography, or CT, scanners, and also helped launch the field of molecular evolution.