© 1992 • 366 pp., illus.
This book has been produced using print on demand technology.
Paper • ISBN  0-87969-595-1

This is an expanded edition of the landmark collection of 35 essays by pioneers of molecular biology that was first published in 1966 as a 60th birthday tribute to Max Delbrück. 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).

On first publication it was recommended 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 but has long been out of print.

This new edition includes Gunther Stent's obituary of Max Delbrück, two commentaries on issues raised in the book reprinted from Scientific American and Science, and a new preface in which John Cairns reflects on the book's creation and molecular biology's “age of innocence.”

Preface to the Expanded Edition (J. Cairns)

Origins of Molecular Biology

Introduction: Waiting for the Paradox (G.S. Stent); A Physicist Looks at Biology (M. Delbrück); Biochemical Genetics: Some Recollections (G.W. Beadle); The Target Theory (K.G. Zimmer); High Energy Phosphate Bonds: Optional or Obligatory? (H.M. Kalckar)

The Phage Renaissance

Bacteriophage: One-Step Growth (E.L. Ellis); Electron Microscopy of Phages (T.F. Anderson); The Eclipse in the Bacteriophage Life Cycle (A.H. Doermann); The Prophage and I (A. Lwoff); The Injection of DNA into Cells by Phage (A.D. Hershey); Transfer of Parental Material to Progeny (L.M. Kozloff); Electron Microscopy of Developing Bacteriophage (E. Kellenberger)

Phage Genetics

Phenotypic Mixing (A. Novick); Mating Theory (N. Visconti); On the Physical Basis of Genetic Structure in Bacteriophage (A.D. Kaiser); Adventures in the rII Region (S. Benzer); Conditional Lethals (R.S. Edgar); Mutations of Bacteria and of Bacteriophage (S.E. Luria); Gene, Transforming Principle, and DNA (R.D. Hotchkiss); Sexual Differentiation in Bacteria (W. Hayes); Bacterial Conjugation (E.L. Wollman); Story and Structure of the l Transducing Phage (J. Weigle)

DNA

Growing Up in the Phage Group (J.D. Watson); Demonstration of the Semiconservative Mode of DNA Duplication (M. Meselson, F.W. Stahl); The Auto-radiography of DNA (J. Cairns); fc: Multum in Parvo (R.L. Sinsheimer); The Relation between Nuclear and Cellular Division in Escherichia coli (O. Maaloe)

Ramifications of Molecular Biology

The Mammalian Cell (T.T. Puck); The Plaque Technique and the Development of Quantitative Animal Virology (R. Dulbecco); Quantitative Tumor Virology (H. Rubin); The Natural Selection Theory of Antibody Formation; Ten Years Later (N.K. Jerne); Cybernetics of the Insect Optomotor Response (W.E. Reichardt); Terminal Redundancy, or All's Well That Ends Well (G. Streisinger)

Reprints

Book Review (J. Kendrew); That Was the Molecular Biology That Was (G. Stent); Max Delbrück, 1906-1981 (G. Stent)