The American Phage Group

The American Phage Group offers a fascinating historical account of the American Phage Group and how its new research framework became the foundation for molecular biology.

This book serves as the first critical and analytical study of the American Phage Group—a small cohort of scientists who gathered around Max Delbrück, Salvador Luria, and Alfred Hershey between 1940 and 1960. Their pioneering framework of research commitments laid the groundwork for the field of molecular biology. These three young, charismatic, and iconoclastic scientists recognized the significance of bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) in studying the gene and heredity at large, leading to them being joint recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1969.

Based on substantial archival research, numerous participant interviews collected over the past thirty years, and an intimate knowledge of the relevant scientific literature, William Summers presents a fascinating new history of the American Phage Group. Rather than offering a linear narrative of progress by past heroes, this book emphasizes the diversity and historical contingencies in the group’s development.