ABSTRACT
Nature of genes and mutations: the early attempts Niels Bohr, the great physicist and Nobel laureate, became interested in theoretical problems of biology in the early 1930s. His lecture entitled “Light and Life” and delivered to the International Congress on Light Therapy in Copenhagen in 1932 was not only unusual but had a lasting effect. Young physicist, Max Delbrück (Figure 2.1 and Box 2.1), who was on a postdoctoral Rockefeller fellowship at Bohr’s Institute at that time, attended the lecture and was strongly impressed. Bohr’s thoughts that the complementarity observed in quantum mechanics might have implications in biology were particularly attractive to Delbrück. In the following months and years Bohr also conducted a series of seminars devoted to basic biological problems. In addition to a dozen bright physicists, including Delbrück, he also invited Nikolay Timofeeff-Ressovsky, a Russian geneticist who had been working in Berlin since 1925 and was interested in theoretical biology (Figure 2.2 and Box 2.2). Soon after, Delbrück returned to Berlin and took a position at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. Collaboration between Timofeeff-Ressovsky and Delbrück began.
