On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
“When a new phenomenon like virus multiplication comes to be studied, almost all the knowledge of cellular chemistry and function gained from other types of study turns out to be irrelevant. A virus is not an individual organism in the ordinary sense of the term but something which could almost be called a stream of biological pattern. The pattern is carried from cell to cell by the relatively inert virus particles, but it takes on a new borrowed life from its host at each infection.—Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet” [Burnet went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1960.]
—Scientific American, February 1957
More gems from Scientific American’s first 175 years can be found on our shiny anniversary page.