"The tools of the discipline: Biochemists and molecular biologists": A comment

Journal of the History of Biology

Volumn 29, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 451-462

  Burian, Richard M ^a  

^a VIRGINIA POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE AND STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

APPARATUS, EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES; ARTICLE; BIOCHEMISTRY; HISTORY; LABORATORY; MOLECULAR BIOLOGY;

BIOCHEMISTRY; EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES; HISTORIOGRAPHY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; LABORATORIES; MOLECULAR BIOLOGY;

EID: 0030236992     PISSN: 00225010     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/BF00127384     Document Type: Review

References (8)

1. See, for example, A. E. Clarke and J. H. Fujimura, eds., The Right Tools for the Job: At Work in Twentieth-Century Life Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992);
2. and the special section on "The Right Organism for the Job," ed. M. Lederman and R. Burian, J. Hist. Biol., 26: 2 (1993), 235-367.
3. See, e.g. the special section on "Building Molecular Biology," J. Hist. Biol., 26: 3 (1993). The topic is a rich one with a rapidly growing literature.
4. Supplemented by a tendency in the culture of the Cavendish that de Chadarevian mentions, but does not discuss explicitly, to hold informal seminars and discussions on particular problems of interest to a given group outside the normal work schedule and ignoring the boundaries between units.
5. Other features of this sort (e.g., the presence of much more RNAse in bacterial than in rat-liver cells) are highlighted by Rheinberger in various places; these points will be amplified in his Experimental Systems, Difference, and Writing. Towards a History of Epistemic Things: The In Vitro Synthesis of Proteins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, in press).
6. See, e.g., D. Zallen, "The Rockefeller Foundation and French Research," Cah. Hist. CNRS, 5 (1989), 35-58.
7. My own list of candidates is already too large to write out here, but it might help to cite another example of a different sort: Henry Quastler, who tried to apply Shannon-Weaver information theory literally to the analysis of genetic information, and whose work will be analyzed usefully in Lily Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code (Chicago: Chicago University Press, forthcoming).
8. The situation in France is particularly interesting in this regard. As my colleagues and I have argued (but also Gaudillière and many others), fundamental work in Mendelian, physiological, and molecular genetics had to be initiated outside the university system, by "outsiders" within the system of research laboratories: see R. M. Burian, J. Gayon, and D. Zallen, "The Singular Fate of Genetics in the History of French Biology, 1900-1940," J. Hist. Biol. 21 (1988), 357-402. This had as one consequence the necessity for international collaborations after World War II in order to bring various techniques into the relevant laboratories, acquire crucial funding and sponsorship, and forge a sufficiently robust network to gain a full hearing for work that would not otherwise have been likely to gain a secure foothold in France.