Elizabeth Kutter

Dr. Elizabeth (Betty) Kutter (11 August 1939-18 July 2026) was a phage biologist based at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, USA, where she was a Professor Emeritus. She led the T4 Genome Sequencing project, and organized the biennial Evergreen International Phage Biology meetings that draw hundreds of phage researchers from all over the world.

Early life and career Kutter attended Garfield High School in Seattle from 1953 to 1958. Her father was an electrical engineer working at Boeing, and she credits him for her mathematical ability.

From here, she moved to the University of Rochester in New York where she completed her PhD in the Department of Radiation Biology and Biophysics in 1968. Salvador Luria would later quote her PhD research in his Nobel Prize talk. including Gisela Mosig.

Evergreen International Phage Biology Meetings Intended as a successor to the regular meeting held by the Phage Group at the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, the first West Coast T4 meeting was held at the Evergreen Bacteriophage Lab in 1975. Much like Kutter's work more generally, their early incarnations were focused on T4 phage, and they later expanded to be about phage research more broadly.

Selected publications