Saturday, August 22, 2009

Max Delbruck: master of biophysics

Max Delbruck (1906-1981) started his career as a physicist but switched to biology. This week in PHYS3170 we saw how using simple arguments Delbruck was able to propose that the carrier of genetic information must be a single molecule.

About 20 years ago I heard a speaker refer to a commencement (i.e., graduation ceremony) address by Delbruck at Caltech in 1978, entitled the Arrow of Time: Beginning and End. I always wanted to track down a copy and a few years ago I was delighted that I found that Delbruck's son Tobi has a site with an annotated copy of the original text of the address

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