Research work · 2023
From Physics to Biology
William C. Summers
The American Phage Group
Abstract
This chapter describes the “target theory.” This theory refers to a model for the way radiation interacts with cells. The two basic features of this model are that radiation is considered to behave as random projectiles, and that the components of the cell are considered as the targets to be bombarded (and inactivated or otherwise modified in some observable way) by these projectiles. From the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s, the target theory and its applications were a major preoccupation of the field that became known as biophysics. Here, the chapter illustrates the role that radiation biology and various versions of the target theory played in the origins of molecular biology and of phage research in particular.