[en] Data are summarized from a ten-year study on the radiobiology of phages. The results showed that: phages are inactivated principally by damage to DNA; DNA damage is of two types, base damage and double-strand breakage; double-strand breakage may be lethal because of interruption within a gene, however in phage systems the damage is more fundamental in that only a single DNA fragment is injected into the host; E. coli phage T4 is relatively resistant to inactivation by x-rays; and the rate of production of strand breaks and base damage is nearly the same in bacteriophage and bacteria