A Slot Machine, A Broken Test Tube: An Autobiography

S. E. Luria

Jul 2025 · Plunkett Lake Press

About this ebook

“S.E. Luria’s autobiography adds another gem to the Sloan Foundation series... The molecular biologist and Nobel laureate writes with a crispness and concision that mirrors his outlook and his work. He is proud of ‘reductionist’ science; he is committed to a life of reason, to socialist ideals and political action. Early on, he confides also, he committed himself to acquiring a musical education and, later, to learning and appreciating ‘modern’ poets. All this is told in chapters that compartmentalize the life: the developing years as a Jew in a modest Turin household in pre-fascist Italy; the scientific achievements; the teaching career; the marriage, emotional life, political activities... Luria’s chapters on molecular biology and its shapers are fine additions to the genre; the fascination of the book, however, is in the man... he presents himself with forthright honesty and integrity — unexpectedly disclosing, at the end, that he suffered years of depressive episodes prior to drug treatment. A remarkable life — short on humor, perhaps, but abundant in courage and conviction.” — Kirkus

“Luria has written a successful, and unusual, autobiography... Luria writes well, and with wry humor.” — Science

“Salvador Edward Luria, Nobel laureate for ground-breaking work in molecular biology, committed socialist, political activist and sometime depressive, has a remarkable life story to tell.” — The New York Times

“[Luria’s] book is an honest and unbiased exploration of himself. It gives many insights to various aspects of life, and is definitely a must read. The reverence with which he speaks of science and his colleagues is inspiring. Reading this book, it feels like we actually get to know Luria. He ceases to be a ‘Nobel Prize-winner’ and rather becomes an admirable man who has much to teach us about life.” — Current Science

“The book... is at once confessional and analytic of motive. Organized by development rather than by calendar alone, the text outlines what Luria did and who he is by describing the growth of his personal set of commitments, active guides to action within this or that sphere of a long and reflective life... It is easy to admire this cultivated, ironic man and his lucid, pointed book of an enviable life founded alike on reason and on commitment. For readers who find empathy for the growth of candor and self-awareness as the chapters pass, admiration will be colored with a deeper cast. There are no modern autobiographies and not many novels that can more reward readers young enough to find the grand choices in life still before them.” — Scientific American

“Salvador Luria is one of the great pioneers of modern molecular biology — a deeply committed person in science, in political affairs, and in other human concerns. This book conveys much of his quality, both as a scientist and as a person... This book, unusually frank and intimate in comparison to most scientific autobiographies, offers an illuminating self-portrait of a truly outstanding man and scientist.” — American Scientist

“[W]ell worth reading.” — The Antioch Review

About the author

Born to a Jewish family in Turin, Italy, Salvador Edward Luria (1912-1991) received his medical degree at the University of Turin in 1935. He was drafted as a medical officer into the Italian army (1936-37) before pursuing postgraduate training in radiology and physics at the University of Rome, where he studied briefly under Enrico Fermi and where he first began working with bacteriophage.

In 1938, Luria left fascist Italy to work at Institut du Radium in Paris. He fled Paris by bicycle just ahead of the advancing Germans in June 1940. After receiving an immigration visa for the US in Marseille, Luria reached New York in September 1940 where, Fermi, who had preceded him to the US, helped Luria obtain a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship and become a research assistant at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. A Guggenheim fellowship allowed him to spend 1942 at Vanderbilt University working with Delbrück. In 1943, Luria became an instructor at Indiana University, where he remained until 1950, when he moved to the University of Illinois in Urbana as professor of microbiology. In 1959, after a sabbatical year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Luria was appointed chair of MIT’s newly-formed microbiology department. Named Sedgwick Professor of Biology in 1964 and founding director of the Center for Cancer Research in 1972, Luria remained at MIT until his retirement in 1985, becoming Institute Professor of Biology Emeritus.

Known for his political activism, Luria was denied a passport in 1953 to deliver a paper at a scientific meeting in Oxford, England. James Watson, Luria’s first graduate student at Indiana University, delivered the paper in his absence. Later, Luria publicly opposed US involvement in the Vietnam War, serving as a leader of the highly visible anti-war Boston Area Faculty Group on Public Issues. Within days of winning the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Max Delbrück and Alfred Hershey “for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses”, Luria learned that his name appeared on a National Institutes of Health funding blacklist. The ban was ultimately rescinded or ignored. Luria secured National Cancer Institute funding in 1972 for the MIT Center for Cancer Research.

Luria was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959 and was named a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1960. In 1964, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. From 1968 to 1969, he served as president of the American Society for Microbiology. In 1969, he was awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University together with Max Delbrück. He received the National Medal of Science in 1991.