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Interview with Max Delbruck

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http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M MAX DELBRÜCK (1906-1981) INTERVIEWED BY CAROLYN HARDING July 14-September 11, 1978 ARCHIVES CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Pasadena, California Subject area Molecular biology Abstract Interview in 1978 with Max Delbrück, professor of biology emeritus, begins with his recollections of growing up in an academic family in Berlin. Trained at Göttingen in the late 1920s as a theoretical physicist, he later switched to biology, inspired by Niels Bohr to investigate the applications of complementarity to biological phenomena. After postgraduate work at Bristol and Copenhagen, he returned to Berlin in 1932 to work for Lise Meitner and formed a “club” of theoretical physicists, biologists, and biochemists, who met for discussions at his mother’s house. Recollections of the advent of the Nazis in 1933. In 1937 Delbrück left Berlin for Caltech on a Rockefeller Fellowship; he defends the decision of other German scientists, notably Heisenberg, to remain in Germany. At Caltech he began working in Drosophila genetics but quickly shifted to phage work with Emory Ellis. Moved to Vanderbilt University in 1940, where he remained for seven years; comments on Oswald Avery’s identification of DNA as the “transforming principle.” Recalls his association with Salvador Luria and summer phage group at Cold Spring Harbor in the 1940s; joint letter with Linus Pauling to Science in 1940 on intermolecular forces in biological processes; his http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M reaction to 1945 publication of Erwin Schrödinger’s What is Life? Returned to Caltech in 1947 as professor of biology; comments on activities of Biology Division under chairmen George W. Beadle and Ray Owen, and the psychobiology of Roger Sperry. Recalls 1953 Watson-Crick discovery of the structure of DNA; comments on Watson as director of Cold Spring Harbor and on The Double Helix. Comments on receiving (with Luria and Alfred Hershey) the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Recalls his later work on Phycomyces. The interview ends with Delbrück’s overview of the history of German science and its travails under the Nazis, and recollections of his postwar visits there. Administrative information Access The interview is unrestricted. Copyright Copyright has been assigned to the California Institute of Technology © 1979. All requests for permission to publish or quote from the transcript must be submitted in writing to the University Archivist. Preferred citation Delbrück, Max. Interview by Carolyn Harding. Pasadena, California, July 14- September 11, 1978. Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology Archives. Retrieved [supply date of retrieval] from the World Wide Web: http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M Contact information Archives, California Institute of Technology Mail Code 015A-74 Pasadena, CA 91125 Phone: (626)395-2704 Fax: (626)793-8756 Email: [email protected] Graphics and content © California Institute of Technology. http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M Caricature of Max Delbrück by Hans Gloor, 1950s. http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M California Institute of Technology Oral ect Interview with Max Delbruck by Carolyn Harding Pasadena, California Caltech Archives, 1979 Copyright © 1979 by the California Institute of http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M Errata: p. 2: “Preussiche Jahrbücher”—Correct spelling is Preussische. p. 6 fn: Should be Schweigermutter (one word) and im neuen Haus. p. 26: “He’s still alive”—Hans Kienle died in 1975. p. 63: “tobbaco mosiac virus”—Correct spelling is tobacco mosaic virus. http://resolver .caltech .ed u/CaltechOH :OH _ Delbruck_ M TABLE OF CO~~ENTS Interview with Max Delbruck l-20 Father's historical and career in Berlin; Adolf von Harnack (relative, and neighbor); mother and mother's family; relationship ; intellectual environ- ment in home; economic situation pre- and post-WWI; life during WWI; friendships between Delbruck, Harnack, and Bonhoeffer families; cousin Ernst von Harnack and visit to K. Adenauer in 's; involvement of three families in German Resistance; high school; early interest in astronomy; friendship with K.F. Bonhoeffer; of science education. TUbingen and astronomy; Berlin; part-time job at Potsdam Observatory; condition of German astronomy; scientific, cultural, and political environment in Berlin; W. Heisenberg's seminar on quantum physics in Berlin (winter 1 25- 1 26); Gottingen and attempt to write astronomy thesis on novae; switch to theoretical physics; thesis on bonding of lithium molecule under M. Born and W. Heitler (1930); friendship with student W. Brock; postdoctoral position with J.E. Lennard-Jones in Bristol (1929-1931, 1932); Rockefeller Fellowship at and Zurich (1931-1932); friendship with G. Gamow. 39-60 N. Bohr and complementarity; job as assistant to L. Meitner at Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry ( ); visit to and Bohr's lecture on "Light and ); paper with G. Moliere on statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics; contribution to theoretical interpretation of ("Delbruck ); political situation at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes under Hitler; example of F. Haber and confrontation over memorial service; group seminars of theoretical physicists, biologists, and biochemists; first biology paper with N.W. Timofeeff-Ressovsky and K.G. Zimmer, on radiation genetics (1935); conference in with Timofeeff, H.J. Muller, and Bohr (1936); Muller and Communism; 0. Hahn and L. Meitner's discovery of fission; the science club and work of H. Gaffron and K. Wohl on photosynthesis; Rockefeller to Pasadena; 11 attempt to obtain Habilitation; German "indoctrination camps ; moral issue of leaving or staying in Nazi and Phage Group, 1937-1946 61-77 to U.S. on Rockefeller Fellowship (1937); month in Harbor with M. Demerec; trip west with visit to L. Stadler; arrival at California Institute of Technology to http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M TABLE OF CONTENTS continued study Drosophila genetics; T.H. Morgan, A.H. Sturtevant, C. Bridges; E.L. Ellis and bacteriophage; expiration of fellowship and appoint­ ment at Vanderbilt (1940); early phage workers; Cold Spring Harbor summer phage course; S.E. Luria; O.T. Avery and discovery of DNA as "transforming principle"; origin of "joint paper" with 1. Pauling (1940); attitude towards biochemistry; reaction to E. Schrodinger's What is Life?; comparison of England and U.S.; "Principle of Limited Sloppiness." California Institute of Technology, 1947-Present 78-92 Changes in Biology Division; psychobiology and R. Sperry; plant physiology and F. Went; interest in animal viruses; R. Dulbecco; reactionto Watson-Crick discovery of structure of DNA; problems posed by structure; J.D. Watson; Watson and Cold Spring Harbor; The Double Helix; motivations for doing science; the Nobel Prize and recognition; teaching. Physicists and Biology 93-101 Complementarity and biology; contributions of physicists to biology; research on phototactic bacteria and Phycomyces; the nature of biological laws and simple versus complex biological mechanisms. Postwar Visits to Germany, 1947-Present 101-113 Institutional history of German science; visit to Germany (1947); bringing phage to C. Bresch in Freiburg; conditions in postwar Germany; visit to 0. Warburg; guest at Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry (1954); University of Cologne (1956, 1961-1963); University of Constance; changes in German universities and institutes; future of scientific research and education. http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT Interview with Max Delbruck by Carolyn Harding Pasadena, California Session 1 July 14, 1978 Session 2 July 18, 1978 Session 3 July 20, 1978 Session 4 July 24' 1978 Session 5 August 1, 1978 Session 6 September 11' 1978 Begin Tape 1, Side 1 Harding: Suppose we begin with your family, your father. Delbruck: My father was a professor of history at the University of Berlin and 58 years older than I, so he was practically my grand­ father, and I never knew him in the part of his life when he was still struggling. His specialty was the history of the art of war and material criticism of the sources. Previous historians had largely compared written sources, and by comparing them had tried to figure out what was right and what was wrong. He went much further and saw in the written sources a generally very corrupted description of a battle. He actually tried to find out the logistics available then and what was the terrain: could soldiers actually run these distances and could that many soldiers of this kind be provisioned and so on, and eliminated thereby many things that had been perpetuated as legends. He did this through all periods of history - comparisons of the feudal regime of the Persians with the feudal regime of the Middle Ages, and the first organized infantry of the Greeks with the first organized infantry of the Swiss in the fifteenth century, and so on. So he illuminated history in that way. He taught a two-year course in general history ranging from the Egyptians to modern times, "The history http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M Delbruck-2 of the art of war in the framework of political history," which was published in a number of volumes incorporating the results of vast numbers of Ph.D. theses. 1 Then after he retired he also published his 2 lecture series as a Weltgeschichte. I was the youngest of seven children, four sisters and three brothers. My four sisters are still all alive, the oldest is going to be 88 this year. My oldest brother was killed in action in the First World War; I knew very little of him because he was sent to a boarding high school, and then he was at the University, and then he was in the war and was killed; he was fourteen years older than I. My other brother, Justus, was four years older and of him I saw an enormous amount; we shared a room for quite a number of years of my adolescence and my relation to him was a very great mixture of admiration and competition and all things that siblings can have.
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