Delbrück, Max

(born Sept. 4, 1906, Berlin, Ger.—died March 9, 1981, Pasadena, Calif., U.S.) German-born U.S. biologist. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen in 1930, and in 1937 he immigrated to the U.S., where he joined the California Institute of Technology faculty. In 1939 he discovered a one-step process for growing bacteriophages that would induce a phage, after an hour of inactivity, to multiply to produce several hundred thousands of progeny. In 1946 he and A.D. Hershey independently discovered that the genetic material of different kinds of viruses can combine to create new types of viruses, a process previously believed to be limited to higher, sexually reproducing forms of life. In 1969 he shared a Nobel Prize with Hershey and their colleague Salvador Luria.

Delbrück, Max (1906–81) geneticist, virologist; born in Berlin, Germany. Trained as a physicist, he performed research in Europe, where he devised mathematical proofs for the chemical bonding of lithium and published two scientific papers on quantum mechanics. He began his fundamental investigations on bacteria and their viruses (bacteriophages) after coming to the U.S.A. to join the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) (1937–39). He continued his bacteriophage research through his years at Vanderbilt University (1940–47), where he showed that viruses can recombine genetic material (1946). Delbruk returned to Caltech (1947–76), where he later turned his interest to sensory physiology. With fellow bacteriophage researchers Salvador Luria and Alfred Hershey, he won the 1969 Nobel Prize in physiology for his contributions to viral genetics.