Molecular Biology and its Recent Historiography
A Transnational Quest for the “Big Picture”
Abir-Am, Pnina G. History of Science, 44 (2006), 95-118
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“These ten books, among others published in the last five years, testify to increasing scholarly activity in the history of molecular biology, as well as evincing a multitude of methods aimed at reconciling the elusive desideratum of the ‘big picture’ for a discipline at the very centre of socially pertinent science, with the persistent difficulty of extrapolating from limited, local, but more manageable case-studies often revolving around a single unit of analysis, such as an experiment, a laboratory, a scientist, or a scientific institution. This essay review identifies several analytical themes that loomed large in the recent historiography of molecular biology, and compares how different books address those themes. It concludes with a brief discussion of missing themes, while also suggesting new lines of research.”
- Machine to Make a Future: Biotech Chronicles. Paul Rabinow and Talia Dan-Cohen (Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2005). Pp. x + 199. $24.95. ISBN 0-691-12050-1.
- Molecular Biology in Postwar Europe. Ed. by Bruno J. Strasser and Soraya de Chadarevian (Special issue, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 33C, no. 3, September 2002; Pergamon, Meppel, 2002). Pp. iv + 203. (Paperback). ISSN 1369-8486.
- Creating a Tradition of Biomedical Research: Contributions to the History of the Rockefeller University. Ed. by Darwin H. Stapleton (Rockefeller University Press, New York, 2004). Pp. viii + 314. $30. ISBN 0-87470-061-2.
- Inventer la Biomédicine, La France, L’Amérique et la Production des Savoirs du Vivant (1945–1965). Jean-Paul Gaudillière (Éditions de la Découverte, Paris, 2002). Pp. iv + 392. €33.50 (paperback). ISBN 2-7071-3607-7.
- The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930–1965. Angela N. H. Creager (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002). Pp. xiv + 398. $75 (hardcover), $27.50 (paperback). ISBN 0-226-12025-2 (hardcover), 0-226-12026-0 (paperback).
- Félix d’Herelle and the Origins of Molecular Biology. William C. Summers (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1999). Pp. xii + 230. $30 (paperback). ISBN 0-300-07127-2.
- Meselson, Stahl and the Replication of DNA: A History of “The Most Beautiful Experiment in Biology”. Frederic Lawrence Holmes (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2001). Pp. xiv + 503. $47.00. ISBN 0-300-08540-0.
- The Man who Invented the Chromosome: A Life of Cyril Darlington. Oren Solomon Harman (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004). Pp. xiv + 329. $52.50. ISBN 0-674-01339-6.
- Making Genes, Making Waves: A Social Activist in Science. Jon Beckwith (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002). Pp. xii + 242. $29.95. ISBN 0-674-00526-0.
- The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age. Suzanne Anker and Dorothy Nelkin (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cold Spring Harbor, 2004). Pp. xxiv + 216. $45. ISBN 0-87969-697-4.