Salvador Edward Luria was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine at a formal ceremony on December 10, 1969. The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine annually.

Birth and early years
Salvador E. Luria was born in Turin (Torino), Italy on August 13, 1912. In 1939 he began studying medicine at the University of Torino. In 1935 he was awarded an M.D. summa cum laude. From 1936-37 he served as a medical doctor in the Italian army. He went on to become a radiologist at the University of Rome.

His career
He began his illustrious career as a Research fellow at the Institut du Radium (Institute of Radium) in Paris. He worked here from 1938-40 since Mussolini’s fascist policies against Jews prevented him from pursuing a fellowship in the United States. He developed his socialist views while living in Paris.

Move to the United States
In 1940 he immigrated to the United States. From 1940-42 Luria became a Research Assistant in Surgical Biology at Columbia University. He received the Rockefeller Foundation Scholarship at Columbia. He soon met Max Delbruck and Alfred Hershey and they collaborated on experiments at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and at Delbruck’s lab at Vanderbilt University.

He later moved to Indiana University where he served as Instructor, Assistant Professor and Associate Professor of Bacteriology from 1943-1950. One of his first graduate students was James D. Watson who was one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA. Due to his political leanings he became unpopular with the administration at Indiana University so he moved to Illinois.

In 1950 he was appointed as Professor of Microbiology at the University of Illinois. At the Urbana Champaign campus while working on a strain of E.Coli, he discovered that specific bacterial strains produce enzymes that cut DNA at certain sequences. These enzymes are now known as restriction enzymes and have developed to be one of the main tools of molecular biology. They form the basis of modern recombinant DNA technology.

At MIT
From 1959 to 1964 he worked as Professor of Microbiology at the MIT. At MIT he focused his research on cell membranes and bacteriocins although he had initially begun research on phages. In 1964 he became Sedgwick Professor at MIT. In 1964 he was also a non-resident Fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. In 1970 he became the Institute Professor and later Professor Emeritus at the department of Biology at MIT one of the highest honours the faculty confers on its own. He organized a teaching and research program in microbiology. In 1972 he founded the Centre for Cancer Research for MIT. He was its director for the next thirteen years till 1985. Two future Nobel prizes winners David Baltimore and Phillip Allen Sharp were researchers at this department. The Biology Department of MIT hosts a yearly Salvador E. Luria lecture in Life Sciences in honour of Professor Luria, the founder of the MIT Centre for Cancer Research.

He was also the Guggenheim Fellow from 1942-43 at Vanderbilt and Princeton. During 1963-64 on his sabbatical he returned to Paris and worked at the Pasteur Institute. Here he found that bacteriocins impair the cell membrane’s functions.

The Nobel Prize
Dr. Salvador E. Luria shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1969 with Dr. Max Delbruck and Dr. Alfred D. Hershey. They were awarded the Nobel Prize for their pioneering work on phages, which helped to open up the field of molecular biology. They worked on the genetic structure and replication mechanisms of viruses. Their basic research is still regarded as the foundation for modern advances in the control of viral diseases as well as for the progress in the field of molecular biology.

Luria was the first scientist to show the structure of bacteriophages. He was a founding member of the phage group formed in December 1941 with Max Delbruck; this was an informal group of scientists working together or separately bacterial viruses or phages. They began working together at the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory at Long Island.

In 1942 they worked on the resistance of phage to sulfa drugs.

In 1943 Luria’s work with Max Delbruck on bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) showed that bacterial resistance to certain phages is due to genetic mutations. Luria was inspired by the slot machine analogy. They also showed that bacteria were suitable subjects for research. In 1943 Alfred Hershey joined them at the Vanderbilt University. They also devised the fluctuation test, which provided experimental evidence that phage resistant bacteria were not a direct response to the environment but were the result of spontaneous mutation. The phage group formed the core of what became molecular biology in the United States.

In 1945 with Hershey he demonstrated the existence of bacterial mutants but also of spontaneous phage mutants. He was considered the world’s leading expert in the genetic structures of viruses.

Awards
Apart from the Nobel Prize in 1969 Professor Luria also received the following awards. In 1935 he received the Lepetit Prize. In 1965 he was bestowed the Lenghi prize by the Accademia dei Lincei. In 1969 he was honoured with the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, Columbia University along with Max Delbruck. This award was bestowed on them for their contributions to the genetics of bacteria and bacteriophage. In 1974 he received the National Book Award for his popular science book Life: the Unfinished Experiment.

Personal life
He was married to Zella Hurwitz in 1945. In 1947 he became a naturalized citizen of America. His wife has done her Ph.D in Psychology. She is a professor of psychology at the Tufts University. Their only son Daniel studied economics. Currently he is a research economist with the United Automobile Workers in Detroit.

Memberships
Professor Luria was a member of many various august institutions. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, American Academy of Microbiology. From 1967-8 he was the President of the American Society of Microbiology. He was also a member of the American Society of Biological Chemists, Society for General Microbiology, Genetics Society, American Naturalists, Society for the Study of Development and Growth, A.A.A.S., Sigma Xi, and A.A.U.P.

As an Editor
He was the Editor or Member of the Editorial Board on various prestigious and scientific journals including Journal of Bacteriology, Virology, Experimental Cell Research, Journal of Molecular Biology, Photochemistry and Photobiology, American Naturalist, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and Annual Review of Genetics.

Major Publications
He was the author of a college textbook General Virology that was published in 1953. In 1973 he also wrote a popular text for general reader called Life: the Unfinished Experiment. This book won him the National Book Award in 1974. This was translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian and Japanese.

In 1984 he published his autobiography “ A Slot Machine, a Broken Test Tube. It speaks of his professional career as well as gives us a personal insight about this famous man. He has been a man who never had to seek the spotlight as his belief in strong family values and hard work has brought him sufficient fame.

Political activist
Luria was an outspoken political advocate throughout his life. In 1957 he joined Linus Pauling to protest against nuclear weapon testing. He was a vocal and visible member of the peace movement. He was a strong opponent of the Vietnam War. He was highly critical of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Apparently as he was a vociferous protestor of what he considered wrong his name appeared in a federal blacklist of forty- eight scientists in 1968 ironically the year in which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. In the 1970’s he was involved in debates over the role of genetic engineering. He made efforts to keep science humanistic. He advocated a moderate path of compromise and regulation rather than the extreme positions of a total ban or full scientific freedom.

Other interests
Doctor Luria was deeply interested in the arts. He was also a sculptor. In 1963 he took lessons in sculpting when he was on a fellowship in Paris. He was very interested in the Humanities and even taught a course in world literature to graduate students at MIT and medical students at Harvard Medical School. He wanted to ensure their involvement in matters outside science.

Death
Salvador Edward Luria died of a heart attack on February 6, 1991 at Lexington Massachusetts. He was seventy- eight years old. He was both a physician and a scientist of international acclaim. Dr Salvador Luria was a man who made the headlines not only with his meteoric rise as a microbiologist but also as a social and political activist. He said he could draw the line between his professional and personal beliefs. He was a highly respected molecular biologist.

He always liked to live in what he called the “eternal present” though his achievements have earned him a place in the future since his achievements both as a scientist and more importantly as a humanist will live forever.