The Biology Department is proud to host the yearly Salvador E. Luria Lecture in the Life Sciences, to honor Dr. Luria, the founder of the MIT Center for Cancer Research.

Dr. Luria became a professor at MIT in 1959. He won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1969 for his research in molecular biology, a field in which he was a pioneer. He also became the world's leading expert in the genetic structure of viruses. He was appointed Institute Professor, one of the highest honors the MIT faculty confers on its own, in 1970.

In 1972 Dr. Luria founded the MIT Center for Cancer Research and was its director for the next thirteen years. Salvador Luria died in Lexington, Massachusetts, on February 6th, 1991.

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