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The Historiography of Molecular Evolution

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Handbook of the Historiography of Biology

Part of the book series: Historiography of Science ((HISTSC,volume 1))

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Abstract

The molecularization of evolutionary biology has been a rich, though not fully exploited, source of interesting research for historians of biology specializing in the second half of the twentieth century. A rich ecology of practices and theoretical debates, embedded in some of the political concerns and policies of the postwar period, is part of the emergence of the field of Molecular Evolution. Such a broad subject has been reconstructed from a variety of historical perspectives but is still open to new perspectives and interpretations waiting for the active engagement of historians of science.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These include the Conference on Evolving Genes and Proteins, at Rutgers University on September 17–18, 1964, and the Colloquium on the Evolution of Blood Proteins that took place in Bruges, Belgium, in the summer of the same year (Dietrich 1994). The same year, Emilé Zuckerkandl and Morris Goodman, representatives of what would eventually be called “molecular anthropology,” were invited to the Wenner-Gren Conference in Burg Wartenstein, Austria, to a meeting on the taxonomy of humans and primates (Zuckerkandl 1964, Goodman 1996). The proceedings of these conferences provide some of the major documentary sources of this period, concentrating a large number of early actors requiring further investigation, and of the first responses of the organismic evolutionists to the molecular newcomers.

  2. 2.

    There is a growing and relevant corpus of secondary literature on atomic fallout and mutation that includes besides Beatty (op cit, 1993), and Paul (op cit), the work of Susan Lindee (1992, 2005), Soraya De Chadarevian (2006), Karen Rader (2006), Jacob D. Hamblin (2007), Angela Creager (2009, 2013), and Mateos and Suárez-Díaz (2015) to name a few. See Dietrich (2006) for an overview of twentieth-century evolutionary genetic debates. On the Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution, see also Provine (1990) and Crow (2008).

  3. 3.

    There is also a contested story about the third team at the University of Texas, who published on the same subject (Johnson et al. 1966). See Powell (1994) and Suárez and Barahona (1996) for diverging accounts.

  4. 4.

    In May 2004, at the Dibner Seminar on Molecular Evolution at Woods Hole Marine Laboratory, Massachusetts, Lewontin generously accepted the interpretation Mike Dietrich and I had developed, in which experimentally oriented fields and traditions played a major role in explaining the origins of the NTME. Jim Crow also acknowledged our interpretation (November 16, 1996, personal communication).

  5. 5.

    Linus Pauling’s life and contributions has been the object of several biographies, including Eaton (2003), Goertzel and Goertzel (1995), Eaton (2003) and Hager (2011). Lily Kay (1993) explores his multiple roles role in the consolidation of molecular biology; Hamblin (2007) makes reference on his participation in the atomic fallout debate.

  6. 6.

    http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/evolution/public/index.html (accessed April 14th, 2016).

  7. 7.

    http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/evolution/public/clock/zuckerkandl.html (accessed April 14th, 2016).

  8. 8.

    As part of the Oral History Project at the Dibner Institute, see the interview of Goodman, by Hagen: http://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/evolution/public/goodman.html (accessed April 14th, 2016).

  9. 9.

    There is solely a Catalan biography of Joan Oró (1923–2004) written by Miquel Pairolí in 1996, to which I have not had access, despite his relevant contribution to the field of the origins of life and the RNA world. An entire volume was dedicated to the memory of Ponnamperuma (1923–1995) by the Journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, 28(2), in April 1995.

  10. 10.

    It should be noted, as historians have argued (see previous section), that in his first version of the NTME, Kimura (1968) ascribed a higher rate of substitution at the molecular level as evidence of the role of genetic drift over natural selection at the molecular level. In King and Jukes’ version (1969) and in subsequent versions of Kimura’s theory, however, it was the constancy of the substitution rate, or the molecular clock, which was also at the center of the mathematical evolutionary model debate (Kimura 1969).

  11. 11.

    On the notion of epistemic space in the field of heredity, see Müller-Wille and Rheinberger (2012).

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  1. Estudios de la Ciencia y la Tecnología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico

    Edna Suárez-Díaz

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  1. Edna Suárez-Díaz
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Correspondence to Edna Suárez-Díaz .

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  1. HPS Dept, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh HPS Dept, 1017 Cathedral of Learning, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    Michael Dietrich

  2. University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA

    Mark Borrello

  3. Tel Aviv, Israel

    Oren Harman

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Suárez-Díaz, E. (2018). The Historiography of Molecular Evolution. In: Dietrich, M., Borrello, M., Harman, O. (eds) Handbook of the Historiography of Biology. Historiography of Science, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74456-8_6-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74456-8_6-1

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