Max Delbrück (redirected from Delbrück, Max Ludwig Henning)

Delbrück, Max 

Born Sept. 4, 1906, in Berlin. American physicist, geneticist, and virologist. Member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

A German by birth, Delbrück studied at the universities of Tubingen, Berlin, Bonn, and Göttingen from 1924 to 1930, receiving the degree of doctor of philosophy from the University of Göttingen. From 1932 to 1937 he worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. In 1937 he emigrated to the United States and worked at the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, Calif.), where he became a professor of biology in 1947. His major works are devoted to nuclear physics, the analysis of spontaneous and induced mutations, bacteriophages, the physiology of the sense organs, and the quantum theory of the structure of chemical substances. For his work in the field of bacteriophages, Delbrück was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1969 (with A. Hershey and S. Luria).

WORKS

“Cosmic Rays and the Origin of Species.” Nature, 1936, vol. 137, p. 358. (With H. W. Timofeeff-Ressovsky.)
“On the Mechanism of DNA Replication.” (With G. S. Stent.) In the book Symposium on the Chemical Basis of Heredity. Edited by W. D. McElroy and B. Gloss. Baltimore, Md., 1957.