A fascinating historical account of the American Phage Group and how its new research framework became the foundation for molecular biology This book is the first critical and analytical study of the American Phage Group—a small group of scientists who gathered around Max Delbrück, Salvador Luria, and Alfred Hershey between 1940 and 1960—and how this novel research program became the foundation of the field of molecular biology. These three young, charismatic, and iconoclastic scientists were convinced of the importance of bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) to the study of the gene and of heredity in general. Based on substantial archival research, numerous participant interviews collected over the past thirty years, and an intimate knowledge of the relevant scientific literature in the field, William C. Summers has written a fascinating new history of the American Phage Group. Rather than a linear narrative of progress by past heroes, this book emphasizes the diversity and historical contingencies in the group’s development.

A fascinating historical account of the American Phage Group and how its new research framework became the foundation for molecular biology This book is the first critical and analytical study of the American Phage Group--a small group of scientists who gathered around Max Delbrück, Salvador Luria, and Alfred Hershey between 1940 and 1960--and how this novel research program became the foundation of the field of molecular biology. These three young, charismatic, and iconoclastic scientists were convinced of the importance of bacterial viruses (bacteriophages) to the study of the gene and of heredity in general. Based on substantial archival research, numerous participant interviews collected over the past thirty years, and an intimate knowledge of the relevant scientific literature in the field, William C. Summers has written a fascinating new history of the American Phage Group. Rather than a linear narrative of progress by past heroes, this book emphasizes the diversity and historical contingencies in the group's development.

First published in 1966 as a 60th birthday tribute to Max Delbrck, this influential work is republished as "The Centennial Edition." 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 ("Journal of History of Biology").

Before the arrival of penicillin in the 1940s, phage therapy was one of the few weapons doctors had against bacterial infections. It saved the life of Hollywood legend Tom Mix before being abandoned by Western science. Now, researchers and physicians are rediscovering the treatment, which pits phage viruses against their natural bacterial hosts, as a potential weapon against antibiotic-resistant infections. The Forgotten Cure traces the story of phages from Paris, where they were discovered in 1917; to Tbilisi, Georgia, where one of phage therapy’s earliest proponents died at the hands of Stalin; to the Nobel podium, where prominent scientists have been recognized for breakthroughs stemming from phage research. Today, a crop of biotech startups and dedicated physicians is racing to win regulatory approval for phage therapy before superbugs exhaust the last drug in the medical arsenal. Will they clear the hurdles in time?

In response to the emergence of pathogenic bacteria that cannot be treated with current antibiotics, many researchers are revisiting the use of bacteriophages, or phages, to fight multidrug-resistant bacteria. Bacteriophages: Biology and Applications provides unparalleled, comprehensive information on bacteriophages and their applications, such as