Lives of a Biologist: Adventures in a Century of Extraordinary Science

231 Pages·2002·0.56 MB·English

by  John Tyler Bonner

LIVES OF A BIOLOGIST
LIVES OF A BIOLOGIST
A D V E N T U R E S
I N A C E N T U R Y O F
E X T R A O R D I N A R Y
S C I E N C E
JOHN TYLER BONNER
HARVARD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England 2002
Copyright © 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Pages 18–20 were originally published as the foreword to On Growth
and Form: Spatio-Temporal Pattern Formation in Biology, ed. M. A. J.
Chaplain, G. D. Singh, and J. C. McLachlan (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 1999); reproduced with permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bonner, John Tyler.
Lives of a biologist : adventures in a century of extraordinary science /
John Tyler Bonner.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-674-00763-8 (alk. paper)
1. Bonner, John Tyler. 2. Biologists—United States—Biography.
3. Biology. I. Title.
QH31.B715 A3 2002
570'.92—dc21 2001051526
[B]
CONTENTS
Preface vii
1. The World of My Elders: 1900–1920 1
2. Becoming a Biologist: 1920–1940 23
3. Everything Peaks: 1940–1960 61
4. Revolution and Progress: 1960–1980 133
5. Coming Together: 1980–2000 169
Index 211
PREFACE
My lovely old office in Guyot Hall in Princeton—
which I have occupied for over fifty years—was
built in 1910. It has thick oak tables, brown wood
window frames, and four lights that hang from the high ceil-
ing, each with a conical green glass shade. The only thing I
have added are bookcases on three walls. It definitely has a
beginning-of-the-century atmosphere.
At this moment I am sitting in my study in our summer
place in Cape Breton. This nineteenth-century house looks
out onto the estuary of a beautiful river. The walls of the
room are made of horizontal boards of uneven width that
have been smoothed with a draw knife. As I look out of the
window by my desk, I can see the occasional small boat on
the water and patches of farmland on the distant hills. Right
this minute all is enveloped in a morning mist.
These two rooms, in some sort of symbolic way, have
framed me for the century. Within that frame there have been
enormous changes. Here I am with my laptop computer
writing this, and periodically entering the Internet for refer-
ences or for reading the latest in the New York Times. Biol-
ogy, the world, and I have gone through many transmutations.
I was born in 1920 and started my interest in biology in the
early 1930s, which means that I have spanned a large portion
of the last century—a century that, above all things, has
been distinguished by an extraordinary series of advances in
biology. If one compares the biology of 1900 with that of
2000, the change has been astounding. In the beginning there
was the discovery of the genes on the chromosomes, followed
vii
by the discovery of embryonic induction; the interpretation
of evolution in terms of changes in gene frequency in a popu-
lation; the rise of an understanding of the biochemistry of
the cell; and perhaps most important of all, the beginning of
molecular genetics, which was followed by the molecular
genetics of embryological development; the great, new
insights into animal behavior; sociobiology; the simplifica-
tion of ecological and evolutionary principles by means of
mathematical models—and so many other discoveries.
To one glancing at this history from a panoramic point of
view, a number of things are evident. One is the pursuit of
the gene and the extraordinary success of the totally reduc-
tionist approach, where the molecules and their structure
have been unmasked. Another is the application of that
reductionist knowledge to the problems of evolution and
developmental biology. A third is the idealization, the sim-
plification, of the vast number of complexities that charac-
terize practically all of what we now know in modern
biology: for instance, the regulation of the molecular activi-
ties within the cell, the complex structure of ecological
communities, the functioning of the brain, the sequential
steps of development, the patterns of animal behavior, and
the intricacies of evolutionary change.
I ask myself where I fit in with all this. Over the years I have
tried to keep my eye on as big a picture as possible, and to see
how it all comes together. Development is not divorced from
evolution nor, for that matter, from behavior; genetics is
intimately intertwined with every aspect of modern biology
from the activities of the cell to those of the brain; the group-
ing of organisms—either as social groups or ecosystems—are
viii P R E F A C E
intimately connected with considerations of development
and evolution.
One of the things that has happened during this hundred-
year span is the enormous accumulation of new and fasci-
nating facts—so much so that it is hard to see even the trees,
let alone the forest; one could almost say that we are now
focused on spots on the bark. A primeval urge inside me
pushes me toward bucking this trend. However, I have not
done it by simply dissolving into generalities, but have
steered a quite specific path, a specific vision.
As will be evident in the pages to come, that vision has
been to consider all organisms as life cycles, an enormously
unifying way of thinking of things for it automatically links
development, evolution, behavior, genetics, physiology,
ecology, even behavior; it is a thread that links all of biology.
The concept of life cycles also lies at the foundation of my
own evolution.
I began with an interest in lower organisms, algae and
fungi and related forms that confronted me with their trajec-
tory from egg to adult, or spore to adult, in a way that could
not be dismissed. Furthermore, my initial laboratory focus
was on the development of the social amoebae (cellular
slime molds) whose life cycle, as we shall see later, is so
peculiar that it is impossible to avoid becoming conscious of
life cycles. They have been for me the lens for all my work,
both in the laboratory and in my writing: the life cycle is a
great simplifying and unifying part of all living organisms. In
particular it is the bond that connects development and evo-
lution, subjects so central to all of biology and ones that have
been receiving increasing current interest.
And then I am conscious of my own life cycle. Here I am
P R E F A C E ix