Thinking about Science: Max Delbrück and the Origins of Molecular Biology By Ernst Peter Fischer and Carol Lipson (review)

BOOK REVIEW Thinking about Science: Max Delbrück and the Origins ofMolecular Biology. By Ernst Peter Fischer and Carol Lipson. New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. Pp. 334. $19.95. Max Delbrück was one of the most dominant figures in the early history of molecular biology. Does he owe this stature to his extraordinary influence and/or to the merit of his direct contributions to that science? His early "quantummechanical model of the gene," though incorrect, drew Salvador Luria and Günther Stent, among many others, into genetics. By introducing and enforcing the so-called phage treaty in 1944, he forced phage researchers to concentrate on seven phage types, thus permitting easy comparison and interpretation of results from different laboratories. His skepticism about the "one gene-one enzyme" hypothesis motivated Norman Horowitz to perform an experiment using temperature-sensitive mutants that, besides providing very important corroborative evidence for that hypothesis, established one of the most important techniques ofbiochemical genetics. In 1950 Delbrück sent Renato Dulbecco on a tour of virology laboratories around the country that led to the Iatter's development of the first quantitative techniques for the study of animal viruses. This list has picked only some of the most salient examples of Delbrücks influence. However, there does not seem to be associated with Delbrück any definite result of such overwhelming importance as the DNA double helix model, the cistronic definition of the gene, or the decipherment of the genetic code. Even in the study of phage, the most significant result, the demonstration that the genetic material is only DNA, is due to Hershey and Chase rather than Delbrück. All the same, it is hard to see how the reverence in which Delbrück was held during his life or the accolades he received, including the Nobel Prize in 1969, could have arisenjust because of his influence. Further, the standard histories of this period do not do much to illuminate the matter. Thus the question has remained, Why was Delbrück so important? This book, written by a former graduate student of Delbrück's, Fischer, and a professional writer, Lipson, does much to answer this question. As a semipopular scientific and personal biography of Delbrück, it both describes and puts into Permission to reprint a book review printed in this section may be obtained only from the author. 612 I Book Review perspective his actual scientific achievements. It also argues for a specific thesis, that Delbrück's biological career was motivated by a search for complementarity that would delimit the possibility of physical explanation of biological phenomena , an idea that was originally proposed by Niels Bohr and subsequently adopted by Delbrück. To the extent that the book is intended for a popular audience with no prior scientific background, it is likely to be a failure. The detail with which it treats scientific issues will probably make it inaccessible to such an audience. However, it is precisely this detail that permits a reliable critical appraisal of Delbrück's work and makes this volume particularly valuable. The book begins by recounting Delbrück's family background (he came from one of Germany's best-known academic families), his childhood experiences, his early interest in astronomy, his unsuccessful attempt to write a thesis in it, and his years at Göttingen, where he wrote a thesis under Max Born on the lithium "molecule." This early research took place against the cultural background of Weimar Germany, and while its political turmoil took its inevitable toll even on somebody as completely apolitical as Delbrück, its artistic achievements do not seem to have had any effect on him. Then came a fellowship at Bristol University , with J. E. Lennard-Jones, where he was supposed to bring the new quantum mechanics that had been developed in Germany. Following this, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship took him to Copenhagen in 1931, where the influence of Niels Bohr probably first drew his attention to biology. However, from 1933 to 1937 he worked as a theoretical physicist in Lise Meitner's group in Berlin, interpreting Meitner's and Otto Hahn's nuclear experiments. His performance at Meitner's laboratory...