Reconceiving the Gene: Seymour Benzer’s Adventures in Phage Genetics

by the late Frederic L. Holmes, Ph.D., the Avalon Professor of the History of Medicine and chair of the Section of the History of Medicine, and edited by William C. Summers, M.D., Ph.D., professor of therapeutic radiology and of molecular biophysics and biochemistry (Yale University Press) More than any other individual, biologist Seymour Benzer is considered to have led geneticists from the classical gene into the molecular age. Drawing on Benzer’s record of his experiments, correspondence and published sources, this book reconstructs how the former physicist initiated his work in phage biology and achieved his landmark investigation.