Hershey was born in 1908 in Ossowo, Michigan. He studied at Michigan State College, he obtained his B.sc in 1930 ( the year Chase was born!) and Phd in 1934.
    In the 1940's Max Delbruck contacted Hershey to say he was very interested in his work and the papers he had published. He asked Hershey to come to Nashville to see his lab and perhaps to some experiments. Hershey accepted and was the third person in what was to be called the  phage group
    Hershey went on to teach and do research at the Washington University School of Medicine until 1950 when he came to Cold Spring Harbor.
    In 1951 he and Chase performed and published their famous blender experiment, which then lead to Hershey recieving the Nobel Prize in 1969 which he shared with Luria and Delbruck  for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses.