Salvador Luria
| Salvador Luria | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Salvatore Edoardo Luria August 13, 1912 Turin, Italy |
| Died | February 6, 1991 (aged 78) Lexington, Massachusetts |
| Citizenship | Italy (1912–1991) United States (1950–1991) |
| Nationality | Italy |
| Fields | Molecular biology |
| Institutions |
Columbia University Indiana University University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Alma mater | Università degli Studi di Torino |
| Doctoral students | James D. Watson |
| Notable awards |
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1969) Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize (1969) |
| Spouse | Zella Hurwitz (m. 1945; 1 child) |
Salvador Edward Luria (August 13, 1912 – February 6, 1991) was an Italian microbiologist, later a naturalized U.S. citizen. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1969, with Max Delbrück and Alfred Hershey, for their discoveries on the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses. Salvador Luria showed that bacterial resistance to viruses (phages) is genetically inherited.
Luria was born Salvatore Edoardo Luria, in Turin, Italy to an influential Italian Sephardi Jewish family. His parents were Ester (Sacerdote) and Davide Luria. He attended the medical school at the University of Turin studying with Giuseppe Levi. There, he met two other future Nobel laureates: Rita Levi-Montalcini and Renato Dulbecco. He graduated from the University of Turin in 1935. From 1936 to 1937, Luria served his required time in the Italian army as a medical officer. He then took classes in radiology at the University of Rome. Here, he was introduced to Max Delbrück's theories on the gene as a molecule and began to formulate methods for testing genetic theory with the bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria.
In 1938, he received a fellowship to study in the United States, where he intended to work with Delbrück. Soon after Luria received the award, Benito Mussolini's fascist regime banned Jews from academic research fellowships. Without funding sources for work in the U.S. or Italy, Luria left his home country for Paris, France in 1938. As the Nazi German armies invaded France in 1940, Luria fled on bicycle to Marseille where he received an immigration visa to the United States.
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