biography
| name: |
Luria, Salvador (Edward)
|
pronunciation:
[looria]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1912–91)
|
| biography:
| Virologist, born in Turin, Italy. At the Curie Laboratory of the Institute of Radium, Paris (1938–40), he studied the effects of radiation on bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria). He then fled the Fascists by emigrating to teach at Columbia University (1940–2). As a research fellow at Vanderbilt (1942–3), he began an informal collaboration with bacteriophage scientists Max Delbrück and Alfred Hershey. Luria pursued his bacteriophage research at the Universities of Indiana (1943–50) and Illinois (1950–9), demonstrating both the effects of bacteriophage genetic material on host bacteria, and spontaneous mutations in bacteriophages. With Delbrück and Hershey, he won the 1969 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (1959–78) and was founding director of MIT's Center for Cancer Research (1972–85). In 1953 he published General Virology, the first text of virology as an independent science, and was an editor and adviser to many professional journals. He remained active after retirement, as both a scholar and a peace activist. |
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