Alfred Tissières on Max Delbrück and Salvador Luria
  Alfred Tissières     Biography    
Recorded: 04 Jun 2001

He [Delbrück] had personality. He was really a character. He could get mad and send people to hell. He was a very good person. Well there was Max and there was Luria in the background, you see. They were linked. If you talk to Jim he will tell you that, Luria was very important but Max was some kind of particular light in the room like Jim was.

Alfred Tissières was a biologist, biochemist and geneticist. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge for his work at the Molteno Institute and subsequently did postdoctoral work on respiratory enzymes at Caltech under Max Delbruck.

Soon after returning to Cambridge, Watson suggested he come to Harvard to work on microsomal particles in E. coli.

At Harvard, Tissières and Jim discovered that ribosomes were made of two unequal pieces, each containing protein and RNA. Tissieres began a professorship at the University of Geneva where his laboratory has become prominent in the field of ribosome research.

Alfred first attended a symposium at Cold Spring Harbor in 1961 and when Jim Watson became director, Tissières would regularly visit with his family during the summer.