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Salvador Edward Luria (1912-1991) Copyright 0 1992 by the Genetics Society of America Salvador Edward Luria (1912-1991) 'I'llC 511'1 S1u\~~uln ALVADOR E. LURIA (SALVAto family and FRANCORASETT14 called LURIA'S attention to the ra- S friends) died on the 6th of February, 1991 at his diogenetic work on Drosophila5 by H. J. MULLERand Imme in Lexington, Massachusetts. He was one of the by N. W. TIMOF~EF-RESSOVSKY, and particularly to protagonists who, in the early 1940s brought bacte- DELRRUCK'Sexamination of the concept of the gene riophage into the limelight of genetics and helped to in physical terms." Also in Rome,LURIA met CEO develop this area of research into one of the roots of RITA,' a microbiologist, and was introduced by him molecular biology as we know it today. This was to bacteriophage. LURIAwas intrigued at thepossibil- recognized in 1969 with a Nobel Prize shared with itiesof bacteriophage for radiobiologicalwork and MAX DELRRUCKand ALFREDD. HERSHEY. started a series of experimentswith RITA'Shelp.8 His He was born SALVATORE LURIAin Turin, Italy, of resolve was further strengthenedby learning (presum- ;I Jewish family, and attended medical school there, ably through RASETTI)that DELRRUCK, whowas by frequenting thehistology laboratory of professor GIU- then in the United States, had also started working SEPPE LEVI]as an intern. While specializing in radiol- on bacteriophage. ogy at Turin and, later, servingin the Italian army as Sadly, the Rome period was short lived. In July, ;I medical officer, LURIA began to considera career in 1938 the Fascist regime proclaimed the "racial mani- basic science as a more appealing alternativeto med- festo." Jewswere thrown out ofjobs.Many emigrated. icine. UCO FANO'was instrumental in this reappraisal. LURIAhad been awarded an Italianfellowship for LURIA started to studycalculus and physics and, in the study in the United States but it was suddenly with- fall of 1937, having moved to Rome to complete his specialization in radiology, was admitted as some kind FRANCORASP~I (b. 1901). close friend and colleague of FERMI.like of lowly trainee in ENRICO FERMI'S extended group at him professor of phvsics at Rome. author of one of the earliest textbooks of nuclear physics. He left Europe for Canada in 1938 andjoined JohnsHopkins the Physics Institute" of theUniversity of Rome. Here University in 1947. His broad scicntific interests included biology and pa- leontology. It seems likely that RASP~Iand I~ELRROCKhad known each I GIUSEPPELEVI (1872-1965). professor of human anatomy and one of other since the early 1930s. RASETTI spent partof 1931-1932 in LISE I he earliest tissue culture experts. had a large following of research students, MEITNER'S laboratory at Berlin-Dahlem. which DELRRWCKjoined in 1932. two other Nobel prize Gmers (KENATO I~ULRECCO andRITA LEVI-MONTAL- " LURIA.with a medical school hackground. had apparentlv no direct UNI) among them. A socialist. he was openly opposed to the Fascist regime. connection with the few Italian geneticists of the time. W:IS hrirfly jailed, ;Ind spent some time in hiding during the war. His strong "This was part of a classic 193.5 paper by N. W. TIMOF~EF-RE~SOVSKY, and colorful person;~lity emergesin N. GINZRURG'S Fami/? Sayings (translated K. ZIMMER and M. DELRRUCK(,Vachr. Ges. 12'iss. Gdtfingen 1: 189-24.5) hy I). M. Low from fmsiro Famig/iare; E. P. Dutton. Sew York. 1967) and "representing a cooperation between genetics and phvsics" (quoted from its passim in C. BARIGO~XI'S/.a Stanzadi Genefira (Francesco Nastro. Luino. preface), the impact of which is discussed at length by STENT(1982) and by 19NI). K. I)UI.RECCO'S Srienza, Vila e Avvenfura (Sperling & Kupfer. Milan. E. P. FISCHERand C. LIPSON(in Thinktng abouf Srience: Max De/bruck and fhe I W9). K. IXVI-SIOVIALCINI'SIn Praise o/Imper/Prtion:MyI-+ and Work (Basic Origins o/Afo/ecu/ar Biology. W. M'. Norton. New York. 1989). A shorter I%ooksI'uhlishers. Sew York. 1988). and LURIA (1984). version of this paper was prcsented bv TIMOF~EF-RF-WOVSKYat a conference Uco FANO(h. 1912), later professor ofphvsics at the University of in Paris in 1937. TIMOF~XF-RFSSOVSKY'Slaboratory in Berlin-Ruch was a (:hicago, was ;I high schnol friend of LURIA'S. He emigrated to theUnited casualtv of the war. He, a Soviet citizen. was taken to the Soviet Union where Stxtcs in I9JH and collaborated with M. I~EMERECin the early 1940s at Cold he lived on in rather sxl circumst;mces and died in 1981. ZIMMER,the co- Spring Harbor on r;ldi;ltion-induced mutations in Drosophila. author ofthe 193.5 paper. followed ~'I~~OF~EF-RFSSOVSKYto the Soviet Union ' The Department of Phvsics at the Universitv of Rome was then at the but later wasable to return toWest Germany to continueworking in radiation pe~kof its hme. Its director. 0.M. CORRINO, eminent scientist. administrator hio!ogy at the Nuclear Research Center in Karlsruhe. near Heidelberg. ;md politician. had heen able to obtain extensive support for ENRICOFERMI ' (;EO RITA (b. 191 I). later professor of virology at the Univrrsitv of ;and his collaborators. CORRINO'S sudden death in 1937 probablv accelerated Rome. w.as working at the time on bacterial contamination of water and had the di;tspora of that group, already destahili7ed by the political situation (see isolated some phages in the course of this work. <:11;1pter9 of G. HotxoN's The Scientific Imagination: Case Studies, Cambridge *-rhese experiments, probahlv planned in consultation with RASETTI(see Universitv Press, 197H). For a sensitive although historically not quite correct I.. F~~~~'~I//usfriousImmigrants: The Intrllrcfual,Migrafion/rom Europe 1930- litcwrv recreation of the mood in the phvsics group BS the war approached. IY41. University of Chicago Press, 1968). reexamined the question of scc I.. SCIASCIA'SLa Sromparsa di Majorana (Einaudi. Turin. 1975: translated whether a single bacteriophage particle was sufficient for infection in liquid hv S. KARINOVICHas The Myste? o/,Wajorana, Carcanet Press, 1987). culture. They were published the following year in France. Genetics 131: 1-4 (May, 1992) 2 G. Bertani drawn. Instead, he was able to move to Paris, where LURIA’Smost influential research contributions pre- FERNANDHOLWECK’ obtained a stipend for him at the ceded the “year of DNA” (1953). During this period Radium Institute. They collaborated with EUC~NE he continued radiobiological studies ofbacteriophage WOLLMAN”to measure the target size of a bacterio- (target size determination, the ”indirect effect” and phage exposed to different kinds of ionizingradiations “Luria-Latarjet curves”)(LURIA and EXNER194 1; Lu- (WOLLMAN,HOLWECK and LURIA1940). RIA and LATARJET1947), experimented with multiple But world events were pressing on. World War I1 and mixed infection as toolsfor probing the intracel- started in September, 1939. By late Spring of 1940 lular behavior of bacteriophage (DELBRUCKand LURIA the Germans were approaching Paris. LURIAleft by 1942; LURIAand DELBRUCK1942; LURIA1947; Lu- bicycle. In Marseilles he succeeded in obtaining an RIA and DULBECCO1949), discovered mutational American visa. He proceeded through Spain to Por- “jackpots” and invented the “fluctuation test” for tugal, where in September he boarded the ship that spontaneous mutation (LURIAand DELBRUCK1943), took him to New York.” was a key participant in the early electron microscopal In New York, with the help of FERMI(who had studies of the shapes and sizes of bacteriophage par- himself emigrated in 1938) and of LESLIEC. DUNN ticles (LURIAand ANDERSON1942; LURIA,DELBRUCK and the Rockefeller Foundation, LURIA was able and ANDERSON1943), examined a variety of bacterial withinweeks to again pursue radiobiologicalwork and bacteriophage mutation types (LURIA1945, 1946) with bacteriophage (in collaboration withthe physicist with implications for the mechanism of phage repro- FRANKM. EXNER)at Columbia University. He also duction based on the clone-size distributions of spon- verysoon sought contact withDELBRUCK, then at taneous mutants (LURIA,1951), and recognized the Vanderbilt University. Their first meeting led to a first case of whatwe now call “restriction and modifi- collaboration, both by correspondence and through cation” (LURIAand HUMAN1952; LURIA1953). bouts of joint experimental work at Nashville and Although the concept of mutation was already being Cold Spring Harbor, that was to last for more than a freely applied to bacteria and viruses by the few prac- decade. titioners, the fluctuation test for spontaneous muta- In 1943 LURIAobtained a faculty position at Indi- tions established a new and rigorous criterion and a ana Universityin Bloomington,” where he taught new technique for measuring mutation rates. Its math- bacteriology and started a course in virology. There ematical subtleties kept biostatisticians busy for years he met and married ZELLA HURWITZ, psychologist a afterward, while its technical simplicity obviated en- and now professor at Tufts University. DANIEL,their tanglements with the still extant experimental and only child and now an economist, was born in 1948. semantic problem of how a mutation becomes estab- In 1950 LURIAmoved to the University of Illinois in lished. Urbana.” Nineyears later he joined the Biology Restriction and modification was a different story. Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- In this case the heightened confidence in the applica- nology, wherehe remained to the endof his days.For bility of basicgenetic principles tobacteria and viruses several years he also held administrative responsibili- brought out the apparent absurdity of very simple, ties as the first director of MIT’s Center for Cancer accidental observations and the recognition of a new, Research. Both at Illinois and at MIT, LURIAhad a quite general phenomenon. It then took years of hard lasting impacton their instructional and research pro- workin many laboratories to elucidate the diverse grams. enzymatic processes that modify DNA. The initial collaboration of DELBRUCKand LURIA ‘’ FERNAND HOLWECK(1890-1941), well known French radiation physi- cist.
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