A Slot Machine, A Broken Test Tube; An Autobiography

New York: Harper & Row, 1984. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Jerry Bauer (Author's photograph). x, 228, [2] pages. Preface to the Series [Alfred P. Sloan Series]. Index. The Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist describes his major scientific work, recalls the colleagues and students of his long career, and reflects on his triumphs, failings, doubts, and beliefs. Salvador Edward Luria (born Salvatore Luria; August 13, 1912 - February 6, 1991) was an Italian microbiologist, later a naturalized U.S. citizen. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1969, with Max Delbrück and Alfred Hershey, for their discoveries on the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses. Salvador Luria also showed that bacterial resistance to viruses (phages) is genetically inherited. In 1959, he became chair of Microbiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). At MIT, he switched his research focus from phages to cell membranes and bacteriocins. His lab discovered that bacteriocins achieve this impairment by forming holes in the cell membrane, allowing ions to flow through and destroy the electrochemical gradient of cells. In 1972, he became chair of The Center for Cancer Research at MIT. In addition to the Nobel Prize, Luria received a number of awards. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959. He was named a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1960. In 1964, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. In 1969, he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University with Max Delbrück, co-winner with Luria of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1969. He received the National Medal of Science in 1991. Derived from a Kirkus review: S. E. Luria's autobiography adds another gem to the Sloan Foundation series. The molecular biologist and Nobel laureate writes with a crispness and concision that mirrors his outlook and his work. He is proud of "reductionist" science; he is committed to a life of reason and political action. Early on, he confides also, he committed himself to acquiring a musical education and, later, to learning and appreciating "modern" poets. All this is told in chapters that compartmentalize the life: the developing years as a Jew in a modest Turin household in pre-fascist Italy; the scientific achievements; the teaching career; the marriage, emotional life, political activities. Luria set out to study medicine, but a fascination with physics led to Fermi in Rome, and then to a stint at the Pasteur Institute and the study of genes as molecules--a fanciful idea in the Thirties. World War II found him in New York and subsequently at Bloomington, Indiana. The slot machine and the broken test tube of the title were both scientific turning points. In the first instance, Luria made an intuitive leap while watching a slot machine at a college dance. He had been speculating about a problem dividing biologists: did the viruses that infected bacteria ("phages") induce some bacteria to become resistant, or was resistance the result of a random bacterial mutation? If the latter, then an experiment could be set up that would show certain cultures of bacteria infected by phage to be "jackpots" with numerous resistant colonies, while others would be duds. So it was. The broken test tube was indeed an accident, but one that resolved yet another mystifying question: why did some bacteria infected by phage die, without phage progeny showing up in the culture dish? (The bacteria produced enzymes, it turned out, that attacked the phage DNA: the bacteria were still killed, but the phage would not reproduce in that bacteria or in related strains. When Luria's test tube broke, he borrowed a colleague's that contained bacteria of an unrelated strain; the enzyme-modified phage grew happily in this strain--thus demonstrating the new phenomena of "restriction" and "modification.") Luria's chapters on molecular biology and its shapers are fine additions to the genre; the fascination of the book, however, is in the man. He presents himself with forthright honesty and integrity--unexpectedly disclosing, at the end, that he suffered years of depressive episodes prior to drug treatment. A remarkable life, abundant in courage and conviction.