Salvador Edward Luria

Luria, Salvador Edward

 

Born Aug. 13, 1912, in Turin, Italy. American microbiologist. Member of the US National Academy of Sciences (1959).

Luria received his medical education in Turin (1935). After working in F. Joliot-Curie’s laboratory in Paris (1938-40), he emigrated to the USA. He was a professor of bacteriology at Indiana University in Indianapolis from 1943 to 1950 and at the University of Illinois in Urbana from 1950 to 1959. From 1959 to 1964 he was a professor of microbiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Luria is one of the pioneers of microbial genetics. He has done studies on virology and described the structure of bacteriophages. In 1969 he was awarded the Nobel Prize (jointly with A. Hershey and M. Delbriick) for his work in molecular biology.

WORKS

General Virology, 2nd ed. New York, 1967. (With J. E. Darnell.)