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Geographic Isolation and the Origin of Species

The Migrations of Michael White

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Book cover International Science and National Scientific Identity

Part of the book series: Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science ((AUST,volume 9))

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Abstract

The triumph of genetics is one of the landmarks of twentieth-century science. The institutional and intellectual success of this discipline resulted from many factors. The socio-economic relations between genetics and agriculture, the production of various innovative techniques, including refined microscopes and cytological staining, chromosomal mapping, and the invention of various mutagens such as X-rays and gamma rays, capable of increasing gene mutations at will, were important in keeping genetic research alive prior to the Second World War. The domestication of microorganisms for genetic use and the deployment of techniques borrowed from physics and biochemistry, such as chromatography and X-ray crystallography, were crucial for understanding what genes are and how they control chemical reactions in the cell.1

I am grateful to the archivists of the Rockefeller Archive Center and to Doug McCann and the Australian Science Archives Project for help in collecting documents. I also thank Otto Frankel, Sally White and John Martin for their personal recollections, and Rod Home for his editorial expertise. This work was supported with funds from the Australian Research Grants Scheme.

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Notes

  1. On the development of genetics, see for example, G.E. Allen, Life Sciences in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, 1975); G.E. Allen, Thomas Hunt Morgan. The Man and His Science (Princeton, 1978); C.E. Rosenberg, No Other Gods (Baltimore, 1976); Robert Olby, The Path to the Double Helix (London, 1974): H.F. Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation (New York, 1979); Jan Sapp, Beyond The Gene: Cytoplasmic Inheritance and the Struggle for Authority in Genetics (New York, 1987).

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  2. See for example, Donald Fleming, ‘Émigré Physicists and the Biological Revolution’, in Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, eds., The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930–1960. (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 152–189; Charles Weiner, ‘A New Site for the Seminar: The Refugees and American Physics in the Thirties’, ibid., pp. 190–233. Nathan Reingold, ‘Refugee Mathematicians in the United States of America, 1933–1941’, Annals of Science, 38 (1981), 313–338.

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  3. On Richard Goldschmidt, see Scott Gilbert, ‘Cellular Politics: Goldschmidt, Just, Waddington and the Attempt to Reconcile Embryology and Genetics’ in R. Rainger, K.R. Benson and J. Maienschein, eds., The American Development of Biology, (Philadelphia, 1988), pp. 311–346. On Jollos, see Sapp, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 60–65.

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  4. On the difference between American and German approaches to heredity between the two world wars, see Sapp, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 54–86, Margaret Samosi Saha, ‘Carl Correns and an Alternative Approach to Genetics: The Study of Heredity in Germany Between 1880 and 1930’, Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, 1984; Jonathan Harwood, ‘The Reception of Morgan’s Chromosome Theory in Germany: Interwar Debate Over Cytoplasmic Inheritance’, Medizinhistorisches Journal, 19 (1984), 3–32; Jonathan Harwood, ‘Genetics and the Evolutionary Synthesis in Interwar Germany’, Annals of Science, 42 (1985), 279–301.

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  5. There is, as yet, little secondary literature devoted to the study of the career of Michael White. For brief accounts of his contributions to cytology and evolutionary theory, see William R. Atchley, ‘M.J.D. White: The Scientists and the Man’, in William R. Atchley and David Woodruff, eds., Evolution and Speciation: Essays in Honour of M.J.D. White (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 3–20, and Ernst Mayr, ‘Michael James Denham White’, American Philosophical Society Yearbook, 1984, pp. 156–159. A doctoral dissertation on White’s life and work is being planned by Doug McCann at the University of Melbourne.

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  6. White, The Chromosomes (London, 1937).

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  7. White, Animal Cytology and Evolution (Cambridge, 1945).

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  8. White, Modes of Speciatiоn (San Francisco, 1978).

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  9. White, ‘A Life in Three Hemispheres’, unpublished autobiography, 1978–1983, pp. 18–45. White Papers, Series 1, File 1/3, University of Melbourne Archives.

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  10. Ibid., p. 45.

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  11. Ibid., p. 48.

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  12. Ibid., p. 57.

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  13. Ibid., p. 62.

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  14. Ibid.

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  15. Telephone conversation with Mrs. Sally White, Melbourne, 14 April 1988.

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  16. See Atchley, op. cit. (n. 6), p. 6.

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  17. White, op. cit (n. 10), p. 106.

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  18. Ibid.

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  19. Ibid.

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  20. Ibid., p. 107.

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  21. M.J.D. White to H.M. Miller, 31 January 1946; Series 401D, Record Group 1.1, Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, New York.

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  22. Atchley, op. cit. (n. 6), p. 7. For similar views concerning the place of White’s Animal Cytology in the ‘evolutionary synthesis’, see Hampton Carson, ‘Cytogenetics and the Evolutionary Synthesis’, in Ernst Mayr and William B. Province eds., The Evolutionary Synthesis (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), pp. 86–95; at p. 91.

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  23. White to H.M. Miller, 26 March 1946; Series 401D, Record Group 1.1 Rockefeller Archive Center.

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  24. White to G.P. Pomerat, 4 October 1946; Series 401D, Record Group 1.1 Rockefeller Archive Center.

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  25. Carson, op. cit. (n. 23), p. 92.

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  26. Ibid.

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  27. Wilson Stone to Warren Weaver, 5 February 1951; Series 400D Record Group 1.1 Rockefeller Archive Center.

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  28. Mrs. Sally White, telephone conversation 14 April 1988.

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  29. White, op. cit. (n. 10), p. 90.

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  30. Ibid., pp. 90–92.

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  31. See Gary Wersky, The Visible College (New York, 1978).

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  32. Robert Kohler, ‘A Policy For the Advancement of Science: The Rockefeller Foundation, 1924–29’, Minerva, 16 (1978), 480–515; p. 481.

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  33. Robert Kohler, ‘The Management of Science: The Experience of Warren Weaver and the Rockefeller Foundation Program in Molecular Biology’, Minerva, 14 (1976), 279–306.

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  34. For a detailed discussion of the origins of biochemical genetics, see Jan Sapp, Where the Truth Lies: Franz Moewus and the Origins of Molecular Biology (New York, 1990).

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  35. Beadle to Weaver, 15 May, 1951; Series 401D, Record Group 1.1, Rockefeller Archive Center.

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  36. Weaver to Beadle, 18 May 1951; Series 401D, Record Group 1.1, Rockefeller Archive Center.

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  37. Beadle to Weaver, 24 May 1951; Series 401D, Record Group 1.1, Rockefeller Archive Center.

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  38. Stone to Weaver, 19 May 1951; Series 401D, Record Group 1.1, Rockefeller Archive Center.

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  39. On the rise of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union, see Z.A. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko, translated by I. Michael Lerner (New York, 1971); David Joraysky, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, Mass., 1970); Robert Young, ‘Getting Started on Lysenkoism’, Radical Science Journal 6/7 (1978), 81–106; and Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins, ‘The Problem of Lysenkoism’, in Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, eds., The Radicalization of Science (London, 1976), pp. 32–65.

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  40. On the reactions to Lysenkoism in the United States, see Sapp, op. cit. (n. 1), pp. 163–191.

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  41. White, ‘Evolution and Cytogenetic Mechanisms in Animals’, in L.C. Dunn, ed., Genetics in the 20th Century (New York, 1951), pp. 333–369.

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  42. Weaver to Stone, 25 May 1951; Series 401D, Record Group 1.1, Rockefeller Archive Center.

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  43. Sally White, telephone conversation, 14 April 1988.

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  44. Frankel, telephone conversation, 14 April 1988.

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  45. Frankel, telephone conversation, 14 April 1988.

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  46. Ibid.

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  47. See, Jean Buckley-Moran, ‘Australian Scientists and the Cold War’, in Brian Martin, C.M. Ann Baker, Clyde Manwell and Cedric Pugh, eds., Intellectual Suppression: Australian Case Histories, Analysis and Responses (North Ryde, NSW, 1986), pp. 11–23.

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  48. See Atchley, op. cit. (n. 6), p. 12. White’s first, seminal paper showing a change in his view appeared in 1968: White, ‘Models of Speciation’, Science, 159 (1968), 1065–70.

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  49. Mayr, op. cit. (n. 6), p. 157.

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  50. White saw his views on speciation, based upon studies of flightless insects, to be in direct conflict with those of Ernst Mayr who, as a result of his experiences with birds, has emphasised the geographical component in speciation processes. See White, ‘Scientific Contributions of M.J.D. White’, unpublished 4-page manuscript (1979–80?), p. 1 (White papers, University of Melbourne Archives). Differences in organisms studied by biologists have often had profound effects in shaping the production of conflicting biological theories; see Sapp, op. cit. (n. 1), especially pp. 232–234.

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  51. Personal communication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Melbourne, Australia

    Jan Sapp

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  1. University of Melbourne, Australia

    R. W. Home

  2. University of Minnesota, USA

    Sally Gregory Hohlstedt

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© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Sapp, J. (1991). Geographic Isolation and the Origin of Species. In: Home, R.W., Hohlstedt, S.G. (eds) International Science and National Scientific Identity. Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3786-7_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3786-7_11

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