The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology

by Lily E. Kay

Overview

This fascinating study examines the rise of American molecular biology to disciplinary dominance, focusing on the period between 1930 and the elucidation of DNA structure in the mid 1950s. Research undertaken during this period, with its focus on genetic structure and function, endowed scientists with then unprecedented power over life. By viewing the new biology as both a scientific and cultural enterprise, Lily E. Kay shows that the growth of molecular biology was a result of systematic efforts by key scientists and their sponsors to direct the development of biological research toward a shared vision of science and society. She analyzes the motivations and mechanisms empowering this vision by focusing on two key institutions: Caltech and its sponsor, the Rockefeller Foundation. Her study explores a number of vital, sometimes controversial topics, among them the role of private power centers in shaping scientific agenda, and the political dimensions of "pure" research. It also advances a sobering argument: the cognitive and social groundwork for genetic engineering and human genome projects was laid by the American architects of molecular biology during these early decades of the project. This book will be of interest to molecular biologists, historians, sociologists, and the general reader alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190281618
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/03/1992
Series:	Monographs on the History and Philosophy of Biology
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Lily E. Kay received a Ph.D. in the history of science from the Johns Hopkins University in 1987, and was a recipient of a Smithsonian Fellowship at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. in 1984. She was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in bibliography at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, and has taught at the University of Chicago. Since 1989 she has been an assistant professor of history of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	3
	Molecular Biology (A New Biology?)	4
	Rockefeller Foundation: Knowledge and Cultural Hegemony	6
	Caltech: Engineering and Consensus	11
	Molecular Vision of Life	16
1.	"Social Control": Rockefeller Foundation's Agenda in the Human Sciences, 1913-1933	22
	Salvation through Experts	22
	Taming the Savage	29
	Toward a "New Science of Man"	39
2.	Technological Frontier: Southern California and the Emergence of Life Science at Caltech	58
	Machine in the Pacific Garden, 1900-1930	58
	The Cooperative Ideal: Toward a Life Science at Caltech	64
3.	Visions and Realities: The Biology Division in the Morgan Era	77
	Morgan and the New Biology: A Problem of Service Role	77
	Contradictory Elements	91
Interlude I.	Protein Paradigm	104
	Heredity and the Protein View of Life	104
	Chemistry of Proteins during the 1930s: Theories and Technologies	112
4.	From Flies to Molecules: Physiological Genetics During Morgan Era	121
	Jack Schultz: A Bridge to the Phenotype	121
	Beadle, Ephrussi, and the Physiology of Gene Action	125
	The Riddle of Life: Max Delbruck and Phage Genetics	132
	Nascent Trends: Toward Giant Protein Molecules	136
5.	Convergence of Goals: From Physical Chemistry to Bio-Organic Chemistry, 1930-1940	143
	Gates Chemical Laboratory, 1930	143
	Vital Processes: Pauling and Weaver	147
	Crellin Laboratory: Nascent Trends	153
6.	Spoils of War: Immunochemistry and Serological Genetics, 1940-1945	164
	Terra Incognita: Shift to Immunology	164
	Problem of Antibody Synthesis	171
	Science at War	177
	Terra Firma: 1944-1945	185
7.	Microorganisms and Macromanagement: Beadle's Return to Caltech	194
	New Biological System	194
	Selling Pure Science in Wartime	199
	Beadle's Return to Caltech	210
Interlude II.	At a Crossroads: Shaping of Postwar Science	217
	Rockefeller Foundation and the New World Order	217
	Designing "Big Science": Caltech's "Magnificent Plan"	225
8.	Molecular Empire (1946-1953)	243
	Life in a Black Box: The Rise of Delbruck's Phage School	243
	Key Team Member: Delbruck and the Phage Cult	250
	Protein Victory, Pure and Applied	256
	Epilogue: Paradigm Lost? From Nucleoproteins to DNA	269
	Conclusion	280
	Key to Archival Sources	283
	Index	285

Editorial Reviews

"[Kay's] description of the establishment of this biology and her analysis of its implications represent an important contribution to our understanding of the social role of science in the late twentieth century." —The Historian

"As a contribution to the history of the American involvement in molecular biology, Kay's book is a work of considerable value, and it is written with clarity and intelligence." —Science

From the Publisher