© 2007 • 394 pp., illus., timeline, photo gallery
Hardcover • $29 • ISBN  978-087969800-3

This hugely influential book, published in 1966 as a 60th birthday tribute to Max Delbrück, is now republished as The Centennial Edition. On first publication, the book was hailed as “[introducing] into the literature of science, for the first time, a self–conscious historical element in which the participants in scientific discovery engage in writing their own chronicle. As such, it is an important document in the history of biology...” (Journal of History of Biology). And in another review it was described as “required reading for every student of experimental biology...[who] will sense the smell and rattle of the laboratory” (Bioscience). The book was a formative influence on many of today’s leading scientists.

  “There are those who cherish first editions, but the centennial edition, which contains everything in earlier versions, has a bonus beyond the inclusion of the gallery of photographs — it is cheaper than most of its well-worn predecessors. I heartily recommend the book to those who have never read these personal narratives of the early days of microbial genetics.  All can benefit and learn from Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology. Molecular biology is not dead! Long live the phage!”
      —The Quarterly Review of Biology

Note from the Publisher

Preface to the First Edition

John Cairns, Gunther S. Stent, James D. Watson

Preface to the Expanded Edition

John Cairns

I. ORIGINS OF MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Introduction: Waiting for the Paradox

Gunther S. Stent

A Physicist Looks at Biology

Max Delbrück

Biochemical Genetics: Some Recollections

George W. Beadle

The Target Theory

K.G. Zimmer

High Energy Phosphate Bonds: Optional or Obligatory?

Herman M. Kalckar

II. THE PHAGE RENAISSANCE

Bacteriophage: One-Step Growth

Emory L. Ellis

Electron Microscopy of Phages

Thomas F. Anderson

The Eclipse in the Bacteriophage Life Cycle

A.H. Doermann

The Prophage and I

André Lwoff

The Injection of DNA into Cells by Phage

A.D. Hershey

Transfer of Parental Material to Progeny

Lloyd M. Kozloff

Electron Microscopy of Developing Bacteriophage

Edward Kellenberger

III. PHAGE GENETICS

Phenotypic Mixing

Aaron Novick

Mating Theory

N. Visconti

On the Physical Basis of Genetic Structure in Bacteriophage

A.D. Kaiser

Adventures in the rII Region

Seymour Benzer

Conditional Lethals

R.S. Edgar

IV. BACTERIAL GENETICS

Mutations of Bacteria and of Bacteriophage

S.E. Luria

Gene, Transforming Principle, and DNA

Rollin D. Hotchkiss

Sexual Differentiation in Bacteria

William Hayes

Bacterial Conjugation

Elie L. Wollman

Story and Structure of the λ Transducing Phage

J. Weigle

V. DNA

Growing Up in the Phage Group

J.D. Watson

Demonstration of the Semiconservative Mode of DNA Duplication

Matthew Meselson and Franklin W. Stahl

The Autoradiography of DNA

John Cairns

Φx: Multum in Parvo

Robert L. Sinsheimer

The Relation between Nuclear and Cellular Division in Escherichia coli

Ole Maaløe

VI. RAMIFICATIONS OF MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

The Mammalian Cell

T.T. Puck

The Plaque Technique and the Development of Quantitative Animal Virology

Renato Dulbecco

Quantitatitve Tumor Virology

H. Rubin

The Natural Selection Theory of Antibody Formation; Ten Years Later

Niels K. Jerne

Cybernetics of the Insect Optomotor Response

Werner E. Reichardt

Teminal Redundancy, or All’s Well that Ends Well

George Streisinger

VII. REPRINTS

How Molecular Biology Started

John C. Kendrew

Reprinted from Scientific American, March 1967

That Was the Molecular Biology That Was

Gunther S. Stent

Reprinted from Science, April 26, 1968

Max Delbrück, 1906—1981

Gunther S. Stent

Reprinted from Genetics, May 1982

Timeline

Photo Gallery