PREFACE 



Phage research, after a fitful history during its first twenty 

 years, had all but died out in the middle 1930's. In the text- 

 books of bacteriology, the bacteriophages, if they were men- 

 tioned at all, figured as a curiosity item, unconnected with the 

 rest and disposed of in a couple of pages at most. Today, phage 

 research is vigorously pursued in many outstanding laboratories 

 in this country, in France, and to a lesser extent in other coun- 

 tries. There are perhaps 100 people directly engaged in basic 

 research. In addition, the field has become well known to many 

 scientists in other fields: genetics, biochemistry, virology, im- 

 munology, to name the most important. Indeed, there is every 

 reason for the popularity of phage research, and for the interest 

 in its results on the part of other scientists. Phage research has 

 become so interwoven with these other fields that it is quite 

 difficult to extricate it from its entangling alliances, and to pre- 

 sent it as a unit. 



The author of this book, Mark Adams, has a large share in 

 recent developments, by his own research, by his teaching at 

 New York University, and by two special contributions: the 

 phage course at the Biological Laboratory in Cold Spring Har- 

 bor, and the review on the methods in phage research first pub- 

 lished in Methods in Medical Research, Vol. 2, 1950, and now re- 

 printed in revised form as an appendix to the present volume. 

 The phage course in Cold Spring Harbor was instituted in 1945. 

 Mark Adams took it the second year, and taught it since then 

 every summer, except two. In this course were trained many 

 of those who are presently engaged in phage research, and in 

 addition many who are interested in related fields acquired 

 through it a critical understanding of the phage literature. It 

 thus served to bring phage research out of its isolation, and to 

 foster the many links to other parts of modern biology. The re- 

 view on Methods is a classic, and easily the paper most often 



