His famous experiment with Max Delbrück in 1943 demonstrated statistically that inheritance in bacteria must follow Darwinian rather than Larmarckian principles and that mutant bacteria occurring randomly can still bestow viral resistance without the virus being present. The idea that natural selection affects bacteria has profound consequences, for example, it explains how bacteria develop antibiotic resistance.
Along with Max Delbrück and Alfred Hershey, Luria was awarded the 1969Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine. He died in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Professor Luria, a physician and scientist, was internationally known for his research in the fields of virology and genetics.
Luria and Dr. Delbruck also received the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize in 1969 for their work on genetics of bacteria and bacteriophage, which led to the birth of what became known as "the phage group," phage being the shortened form of bacteriophage, the type of virus the research involved.
In 1950 Professor Luria lectured in biophysics at the University of Colorado and was a Jessup Lecturer in zoology at Columbia University.
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