Salvador Edward Luria (1912-1991), Italian-US microbiologist, biochemist and Nobel laureate, sitting in an office. Luria was born Salvatore Luria, changing his first name and adding his middle name when he fled to the US from Mussolini's Italy. Luria shared the 1969 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Max Delbruck and Alfred D. Hershey. The share of the Nobel was awarded for Luria's discoveries in viral genetics, especially his work on bacteriophage viruses and bacterial resistance to these viruses.