Interview with Max Delbruck - Caltech Oral Histories

http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M
MAX DELBRÜCK
(1906-1981)
INTERVIEWED BY
CAROLYN HARDING
July 14-September 11, 1978
ARCHIVES
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Pasadena, California
Subject area
Molecular biology
Abstract
Interview in 1978 with Max Delbrück, professor of biology emeritus, begins with
his recollections of growing up in an academic family in Berlin. Trained at
Göttingen in the late 1920s as a theoretical physicist, he later switched to biology,
inspired by Niels Bohr to investigate the applications of complementarity to
biological phenomena. After postgraduate work at Bristol and Copenhagen, he
returned to Berlin in 1932 to work for Lise Meitner and formed a “club” of
theoretical physicists, biologists, and biochemists, who met for discussions at his
mother’s house. Recollections of the advent of the Nazis in 1933. In 1937
Delbrück left Berlin for Caltech on a Rockefeller Fellowship; he defends the
decision of other German scientists, notably Heisenberg, to remain in Germany.
At Caltech he began working in Drosophila genetics but quickly shifted to phage
work with Emory Ellis. Moved to Vanderbilt University in 1940, where he
remained for seven years; comments on Oswald Avery’s identification of DNA as
the “transforming principle.” Recalls his association with Salvador Luria and
summer phage group at Cold Spring Harbor in the 1940s; joint letter with Linus
Pauling to Science in 1940 on intermolecular forces in biological processes; his

http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M
reaction to 1945 publication of Erwin Schrödinger’s What is Life? Returned to
Caltech in 1947 as professor of biology; comments on activities of Biology
Division under chairmen George W. Beadle and Ray Owen, and the
psychobiology of Roger Sperry. Recalls 1953 Watson-Crick discovery of the
structure of DNA; comments on Watson as director of Cold Spring Harbor and on
The Double Helix. Comments on receiving (with Luria and Alfred Hershey) the
1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Recalls his later work on
Phycomyces. The interview ends with Delbrück’s overview of the history of
German science and its travails under the Nazis, and recollections of his postwar
visits there.
Administrative information
Access
The interview is unrestricted.
Copyright
Copyright has been assigned to the California Institute of Technology © 1979.
All requests for permission to publish or quote from the transcript must be
submitted in writing to the University Archivist.
Preferred citation
Delbrück, Max. Interview by Carolyn Harding. Pasadena, California, July 14-
September 11, 1978. Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology
Archives. Retrieved [supply date of retrieval] from the World Wide Web:
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M
Contact information
Archives, California Institute of Technology
Mail Code 015A-74
Pasadena, CA 91125
Phone: (626)395-2704 Fax: (626)793-8756
Email: archives@caltech.edu
Graphics and content © California Institute of Technology.

http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M
Caricature of Max Delbrück by Hans Gloor, 1950s.

http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M
Errata:
p. 2: “Preussiche Jahrbücher”—Correct spelling is Preussische.
p. 6 fn: Should be Schweigermutter (one word) and im neuen Haus.
p. 26: “He’s still alive”—Hans Kienle died in 1975.
p. 63: “tobbaco mosiac virus”—Correct spelling is tobacco mosaic virus.

http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Delbruck_M
Tom Lauritsen, Max Delbrück, Niels Bohr and Paul Epstein enjoy a moment on Caltech’s sunny
campus in June, 1959. Caltech Archives.
Click on the image to listen to Delbrück’s description of Bohr’s
mishap during his 1932 Berlin lecture