Designs for Life: Molecular Biology after World War II

by Soraya de Chadarevian

Overview

Molecular biology has come to dominate our perceptions of life, health and disease. In the decades following World War II, the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge was a world-renowned center of this emerging discipline. Crick and Watson, among others, did the work that made them famous in this laboratory. Soraya de Chadarevian's important new study is the first to examine the creation and expansion of molecular biology and its place on the postwar governmental agenda through the prism of this remarkable institution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521570787
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/30/2002
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	444
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x 0.98(d)

About the Author

Soraya de Chadarevian is Senior Research Associate and Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Zwischen den Diskursen: Maurice Merleau-Ponty und die Wissenschaften (1990), and co-editor (with Harmke Kamminga) of Molecularizing Biology and Medicine: New Practices and Alliances 1910s-1970s (1998). She is advisory editor of Studies in History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part I. Postwar Reconstruction and Biophysics: 1. World War II and the mobilisation of British scientists; 2. Reconstructing life; 3. Proteins, crystals and computers; 4. Televisual language; Part II. Building Molecular Biology: 5. Locating the double helix; 6. Disciplinary moves; 7. The origins of molecular biology revisited; Part III. Bench Work and Politics: 8. Laboratory cultures; 9. On the governmental agenda; 10. The end of an era; Conclusions.

Editorial Reviews

Focusing on the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, which became an international symbol of the spectacular development of molecular biology during the 1950s and 1960s, and was the laboratory where Watson and Crick presented their famous double-helix model of DNA, de Chadarevian (history and philosophy of science, U. of Cambridge) explores how the field grew from obscurity to a major discipline after the war. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

"I enjoyed this book tremendously, and would highly recommend Design for Life to any reader with an interest in the history of the sciences." Laurette Geldenhuys, Dalhousie University, in The Canadian Bulletin of Medical History

"The book is thoroughly and professionally researched and a significant contribution to the history of molecular biology." Isis

"de Chadarevian's historical account is recommended to all who are interested in the development of molecular biology." Nature

"De Chadarevian offers a timely book, pertinent because of the recent 50th anniversary of the publication of Watson and Crick's description of DNA..... For all 'students' of molecular biology. Recommended." Choice

"Designs for Life makes a contribution both to the history of molecular biology and to the history of science and technology in postwar Britain" Bulletin of Science Technology and Society

"This is an excellent book....a well-written, extensively researched book that sheds new light on the evolution of molecular biology....a very significant contribution to the literature on the history of molecular biology." Journal of the History of Medicine

"With its many perspectives on the rise of molecular biology in Britain, Designs for Life will be appreciated by biologists, historians, and those involved with science policy. The book will surely interest anyone intrigued by the way science seems to follow its own internal logic while participating centrally in the society in which it is embedded." Science

"The juxtaposition of cultural analysis and institutional history is a refreshing change of perspective for the history of molecular biology." Rena Selya, Harvard University

From the Publisher