“The Discovery of Bacteriophage: D’Herelle, Twort, and Kuhn”

William Summers (Yale University)

The attribution of the discovery of bacteriophage to d’Herelle has a long and acrimonious history, including protracted battles in the scientific literature and even a court case in Paris. The stakes in this discovery controversy included both fame and fortune as bacteriophages seemed to be important to the growing science of microbiology as well as showing promise as anti-infectious disease therapy. I propose to consider the deeper meaning of “discovery,” “priority,” and “scientific credit,” topics of interest to both the scientist and the historian, in light of the centenary of d’Herelle’s paper and what became known as the “Twort-d’Herelle controversy.” Two seminal papers on these topics by Thomas Kuhn and Robert Merton will be the starting point for my reflections on what discovery means and how priority and credit are allocated in light of the fraught concept of discovery.

“Lamarckism and Lysogeny at L’Institut Pasteur, 1919-1953”

Jean Gayon (Panthéon-Sorbonne University)

This paper argues that Lamarck’s concept of the inheritance of acquired characters, far from dying due to Darwin’s theory of natural selection flourished in France well into the twentieth century. Significantly it positively shaped debates surrounding bacteriophagy and lysogeny in the Pasteurian tradition during the interwar period. Félix d’Hérelle applied this conception to argue that there was only one species of bacteriophage while his adversary, Jules Bordet applied it both to develop an account of bacteriophagy as transmissible form of bacterial autolysis and to analyze the new phenomenon of lysogeny. Meanwhile Eugène Wollman deployed Lamarckism somewhat differently to achieve a particulate account of lysogeny. Eventually, in the 1950s, it was André Lwoff who along with several colleagues resumed Wollman’s research program, liberated lysogeny and more generally, bacteriophages from Lamarckism to lay the foundations of the modern conception of viruses.

“Phage Therapy in Soviet Georgia”

Dmitriy Melnikov (University of Manchester)

Even as bacteriologists debated its nature in the early twentieth century, bacteriophage was being put to use in treating infections. Promoted by d’Herelle and his allies, phage therapy offered a promise of a specific cure with few side effects, but its efficiency remained uncertain. In the late 1920s George Eliava, d’Herelle’s disciple, returned to his native Tbilisi, now capital of Georgian SSR, and drove the foundation of a new institute devoted to bacteriophage research, where d’Herelle himself worked briefly in the 1930s. Although Eliava fell victim to Stalin’s purges like many others, the institute survived. Sulfa drugs and mass production of penicillin sidelined phage therapy in the west, and the Soviet state rapidly set up mass production of antibiotics, yet research and trials with phage continued at Eliava’s institute. Why did phage therapy survive in Soviet Georgia? What place did it have among other therapies? And how did it serve, and how was it was shaped by, the socialist state?

“Phages and the Living World in the 21st Century: From Oceans to Microbial Ecosystems in Animals”

Gladys Kostryka (Panthéon-Sorbonne University)

The ecological roles of bacteriophages in biogeochemical cycles in oceans, which for a long time remained ignored or underestimated, has been the subject of intense studies since the beginning of the 20th century. Taking as a starting point a recent paper by Maureen O'Malley (2016) investigating the ways in which phages, not usually conceived as "organisms" might instead be conceived as "ecological agents", I discuss scientific as well as philosophical implications of these roles. The ecological roles of bacteriophages, however, are not only crucial for a better understanding of the biogeochemistry of oceans, but also for fighting bacterial diseases. Bacteriophage therapy and the study of phages in the ecological context of microbial systems in animals has been revived recently. Taking as an example work on bacteriophages at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, this paper contrasts bacteriophage therapy in the first part of the 20th century with some aspects of actual bacteriophage therapy.

“Lysogeny as Lynchpin in Understanding the Nature of Viruses”

Neeraja Sankaran (Independent Scholar)

The phenomenon of bacterial lysogeny––the ability of bacteria to apparently spontaneously undergo lysis and subsequently transmit this ability to successive generations––has played a vital role in understanding the nature of viruses. Discovered in 1920, the phenomenon was first wielded by its discoverers as a challenge to the idea that bacteriophages might be viruses, but by the 1950s, had come to be understood as a key mechanism of host-virus relationships. In this talk I present an early episode in the history of understanding lysogeny: the contributions of the Australian medical scientist Frank Macfarlane Burnet who was the first to suggest that the same entity (bacteriophage) could function as both an infectious virus and a hereditary agent of cellular destruction.The British virologist Christopher Andrewes imported this idea into a fantastical "Christmas fairytale” to proposed mechanisms for how viruses might induce tumors in animals. The French molecular biologist André Lwoff’s explanation of bacterial lysogeny with his Nobel-winning “prophage hypothesis,”echoed Burnet’s explanation in molecular terms. The paper ends with the contributions of the American virologist Howard Temin, whose heretical suggestion that Lwoff’s explanation for lysogeny might operate in tumor-inducing RNA viruses proved to be correct.