The man who invented the chromosome : the life of Cyril Darlington / Oren Solomon Harman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harman, Oren Solomon.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Darlington, C. D. (Cyril Dean), 1903-1981.

Darlington, C. D.

Geneticists--England--Biography.

Geneticists.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (342 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Born by mistake, or connivance, to struggling parents in a small Lancashire cotton town in 1903, an uninspired Darlington inadvertently escaped the obscurity of farming life and rose instead, against all odds, to become within a few short years the world's greatest expert on chromosomes, and one of the most penetrating biological thinkers of the twentieth century. Harman follows Darlington's path from bleak prospects to world fame, showing how, within the most miniscule of worlds, he sought answers to the biggest questions--how species originate, how variation occurs, how Nature, both blind and foreboding, random and insightful, makes her way from deep past to unknown future. But Darlington did not stop there: Chromosomes held within their tiny confines untold, dark truths about man and his culture. This passionate conviction led the once famed Darlington down a path of rebuke, isolation, and finally obscurity. As The Man Who Invented the Chromosome unfolds Darlington's forgotten tale--the Nazi atrocities, the Cold War, the crackpot Lysenko, the molecular revolution, eugenics, Civil Rights, the welfare state, the changing views of man's place in nature, biological determinism--all were interconnected. Just as Darlington's work provoked him to ask questions about the link between biology and culture, his life raises fundamental questions about the link between science and society.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

I FROM CHORLEY TO TABRIZ

1. An Improbable Birth

2. A Rising Tide

3. Auspicious Beginnings

4. In Search of Tulips and Truth

II SCIENCE

5. From Cytology to Evolution

6. Roots of a Scientific Controversy

7. Method, Discipline, and Character

Interlude

III POLITICS

8. The Lysenko Mfair

9. Marxism and the Slaying of a Mentor

10. Science in a Changing World

IV MAN

11. The Conflict of Science and Society

12. On the Determination of Uncertainty

13. The Breakdown of Classical Genetics

14. On the Uncertainty of Determination

15. One Final Hurrah

Conclusion: Paradoxes

Notes

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [275]-318) and index.

ISBN:

9780674038332

0674038339

OCLC:

449957214