Manny personified joie de vivre-the name of her game was Fun. Having relinquished personal ambition at an early stage, she was free to pursue whatever interest struck her fancy. And those interests were many, including especially the zoo of characters who passed through Max's lab and visited Caltech over the years. Manny loved stories about those people, of whom I was privileged to be one. "As tired as Seymour at the Grand Canyon" became a standard of fatigue which Manny and Max took glee in applying to novice campers whom they had introduced to the first camping trip of their lives. No such trip was complete without some kind of disaster to recount, later, with enjoyment. Herman Kalckar's broken leg, after he had deprecated the crumbly desert boulders as "Hollywood rocks," was a trophy. My confidence in rock climbing was shaken when, while dangling helplessly in space at the end of a rope held by Jean Weigle, I looked down and saw the Delbrücks slapping their sides with laughter. Practical jokes were almost de rigeur. But make no mistake: This mischief was combined with unsurpassed warmth, hospitality, generosity and concern. To know Manny and Max was to love and admire them both.

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From Max we learned how to do science; from Manny, how to live. As a Californian raised in the Levant, Manny had an aura of cosmopolitan glamour about her. With her quick mind, wide cultural interests, and mental rigor, on the one hand, and her casual charm, good will, and sense of humor, on the other, she was a rare combination of the best personality traits that the Old and New Worlds have to offer. She made the Delbrück home a kind of intellectual salon, where we could drop in on her and Max at almost any time, and socialize with them and with other drop-ins, warming our hearts in the enchanting ambience generated by Manny's wonderful qualities. The venue of Manny's salon was not restricted to her home. On many a weekend, we sat around a campfire somewhere in the California desert, on one of the outings that she had organized. The visits to the Delbrücks' house and the desert outings provided for us many of the most precious memories of the formative years we spent at Caltech, with Manny at their focus.

Gunther Stent

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Manny lived a life that I loved. She was a person in her own right, a partner, not simply "Max's wife." Her ideas and example challenged and expanded the conventions I had been exposed to previously. It was in 1952, when I was newly married, and new to the culture of international science, that Manny and Max welcomed Dave and me into their circle, where plots and activities were hatched spontaneously and carried on with childish enthusiasm. Being part of Manny's life gave me a sense, an experience, of a life that flowed from people to culture to play to science to nature to civic life-all on the lubricants of good food, unpretentious spontaneity, and seemingly effortless immersion in the flow of life. Manny's gift for friendship was extraordinary. Although she had friends all over the world, she always remembered her particular connection with each, picking up the thread from their last time together. And at her home, friends came, friends stayed, friends left, and returned. . .

Anne Stadler