Editing Max Delbrück (section)

==Later life and legacy==
Delbrück helped spur [[physical science|physical scientist]]s' interest in biology.  His inferences on genes' susceptibility to mutation was relied on by physicist [[Erwin Schrödinger]] in his 1944 book ''[[What is Life? (Schrödinger)|What Is Life?]]'',<ref>{{cite journal | author = K. R. Dronamraju | date = Nov 1999 | title = Erwin Schrödinger and the origins of molecular biology | url = http://www.genetics.org/content/153/3/1071.full | journal = Genetics | volume = 153 | issue = 3 | pages = 1071–6 | doi = 10.1093/genetics/153.3.1071 | pmid = 10545442 | pmc = 1460808 | access-date = July 22, 2012 | archive-date = April 28, 2012 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120428155705/http://www.genetics.org/content/153/3/1071.full | url-status = live }}</ref> which conjectured genes were an "aperiodic crystal" storing codescript and influenced crystallographer [[Rosalind Franklin]] and biologists [[Francis Crick]] and [[James D. Watson]] in their 1953 identification of cellular DNA's molecular structure as a double helix.<ref>M. P. Murphy and L. A. J.  O'Neill (1997). ''What Is Life? the Next Fifty Years: Speculations on the Future of Biology''. Cambridge University Press. [https://books.google.com/books?id=B1Ejn6ravj8C&pg=PA2 p 2]. {{ISBN|0-521-59939-3}}</ref><ref name="Judson">[[Horace Freeland Judson]] (1996) ''The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology''. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. {{ISBN|0-87969-478-5}}.</ref> In 1977, he retired from [[Caltech]], remaining a Professor of Biology emeritus. He became interested in the behavioral sciences and spent some unfruitful effort on mold behavior in the 1960s.

Max Delbrück died, at age 74, on the evening of Monday, March 9, 1981, at [[Huntington Memorial Hospital]] in [[Pasadena, California]].  On August 26 to 27, 2006—the year Delbrück would have turned 100—family and friends gathered at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to reminisce on his life and work.<ref>Kiryn Haslinger. [http://www.cshl.edu/images/stories/about_us/harbor_transcript/2007/07_winter/07_winter_Delbruck100.pdf ''Max Delbruck 100.''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923211708/http://www.cshl.edu/images/stories/about_us/harbor_transcript/2007/07_winter/07_winter_Delbruck100.pdf |date=September 23, 2015 }} HT Winter 2007.</ref>  Although Delbrück held some anti-[[reductionism|reductionist]] views; he conjectured that ultimately a paradox—akin perhaps to the [[waveparticle duality]] of [[physics]]—would be revealed about life. His view however, was later refuted upon the discovery of the [[Nucleic acid double helix|double helix structure of DNA]].<ref>{{cite journal|pmc=1275794 |year=1994 |author1=N. H. Horowitz |title=Review of kay, the Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology |journal=Biophysical Journal |volume=66 |issue=3 Pt 1 |pages=929–930 |doi=10.1016/S0006-3495(94)80873-2|bibcode=1994BpJ....66..929H }}</ref>