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Max Delbrück

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Max Delbrück

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Also known as Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück

biophysicist (1906–1981)

OverviewAI-generated

Max Delbrück was a German-born geneticist, physicist, and virologist who later became a citizen of the United States. He worked as a university teacher at Vanderbilt University and the California Institute of Technology. His professional interests included genetics and biophysics. He was educated at the University of Göttingen under doctoral advisor Max Born.

Delbrück received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Other honors included the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize and the Kimber Genetics Award. He was a member of the Royal Society, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the French Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was also recognized in the Royal Society collection and the Nobel Laureates collection.

Born in Berlin in 1906, he died in Pasadena in 1981. He spoke German and English. His doctoral student was Lily Jan. His father was Hans Delbrück. He held an Erdős number of 7.

Synthesized by Vinony from 28 facts across 3 sources: Wikidata, Nobel Prize, Vinony collections. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Nobel Prize

  • The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine1969

    “for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses”

    Shared · 1/3 portion

Wikidata facts

Instance of
human
Given name
Max
Gender
male
Citizenship
United States
Place of birth
Berlin
Place of death
Pasadena
Languages spoken
English language
Doctoral advisor
Max Born
Doctoral student
Lily Jan
Field of work
biophysics
Image
Maxdelbrück.jpg
Show 10 more facts
Commons category
Max Delbrück
date of birth
1906-09-04
date of death
1981-03-09
Erdős number
7
name in native language
Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück
maintained by WikiProject
WikiProject Mathematics
interested in
genetics
Sources (7)

via Wikidata · CC0

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Encyclopedic overview

Max Ludwig Henning Delbrück ( German: [maks ˈdɛl.bʁʏk] ; September 4, 1906 – March 9, 1981) was a German–American biophysicist who participated in launching the molecular biology research program in the late 1930s. He stimulated physical scientists' interest into biology, especially as to basic research to physically explain genes, mysterious at the time. Formed in 1945 and led by Delbrück along with Salvador Luria and Alfred Hershey, the Phage Group made substantial headway unraveling important aspects of genetics. The three shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses". He was the first physicist to predict what is now called Delbrück scattering.

Early and personal life

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Max Delbrück” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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