J. B. S. Haldane

English biologist

• Born: 1892; Oxford, England
• Died: December 1, 1964; Bhubaneswar, India

A key contributor to the field of population genetics, J. B. S. Haldane combined Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theories with the hereditary laws discovered by Gregor Mendel into one synthesized theory of evolution. His popular writings influenced the cultural climate of the day and provided inspiration for novelist Aldous Huxley’s vision of a genetically engineered future in Brave New World.

Primary field: Biology

Specialties: Genetics; evolutionary biology

Early Life

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was born in Oxford, England, in 1892, into an educated family of Scottish aristocratic heritage. His father, John Scott Haldane, was an Oxford University professor and respiratory physiologist whose experiments and scientific frame of mind greatly influenced his son.

Early on, Haldane showed a disposition toward languages and scientific inquiry. He studied the basics of Mendelian genetics by breeding guinea pigs. His formal education took place at Eton College and at New College, Oxford, where he concentrated on mathematics and classics.

Haldane’s most significant educational experiences came when he assisted his father in the laboratory. Sometimes, in order to advance a particular theory, both father and son performed experiments on themselves, a tradition that Haldane would continue well into his scientific career.

Haldane served as an officer in France and Iraq during World War I. He was twice injured in battle. His father was also sent to assist in the war effort, following the Germans’ first use of poison gas at Ypres, France. Haldane was ordered to assist his father and other researchers in developing gas masks and additional methods for protecting soldiers against toxic weapons.

Haldane became committed to socialism while serving in the army and eventually became a member of the Communist Party. Though he maintained his socialist ideals throughout his life, he disagreed with the direction in which communism moved under Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. He also criticized Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, who denied the validity of genetics and whose work was laced with state-mandated propaganda.

From the end of World War I until 1957, Haldane taught at several universities while penning his major books and essays and carrying out experiments in an array of scientific disciplines. His longest tenure was at University College, London, but he also spent nearly a decade at Cambridge. Genetics, biometry, and biochemistry were his main teaching subjects. Haldane’s burgeoning influence in these fields was demonstrated in 1932, when the Royal Society elected him a member.

In 1957, he emigrated to Orissa, India, where he worked first as the head of the genetics and biometry laboratory, then as head of his own laboratory. In 1960, he became an Indian citizen. Haldane was twice married, first in 1924 and again in 1945. He died of cancer in India in 1964.

Life’s Work

Haldane’s single most important contribution to science was his work on population genetics, a field he developed with geneticists R. A. Fisher and Sewall Wright. Different aspects of population genetics appear in many of his writings. The Causes of Evolution (1932) is widely considered to sum up his position and helped change the course of evolutionary biology.

This work, together with Fisher’s Genetical Theory of Natural Selection (1930) and Wright’s “Evolution in Mendelian Populations” (1931), forms the basis of population genetics. The Causes of Evolution is both an overview of evolutionary theory and an elaboration on it. Most significantly, it demonstrates the connection between Charles Darwin’s and Gregor Mendel’s findings.

Before the work of Haldane, Fisher, and Wright, evolutionary theory was not widely accepted. Darwin’s theories had largely fallen out of scientific discourse but were reinstated through Haldane’s reexamination of them. Other theorists who had superseded Darwin were disproved, such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who had argued for the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

The synthesis of Darwin’s and Mendel’s theories allowed Haldane to arrive at a revolutionary concept in biology. When Darwin proposed natural selection in 1858, he lacked an understanding of heredity and the source of variation within a species. Less than a decade later, Mendel demonstrated that inheritance is determined not only by an organism’s parents but by a variety of factors, including random ones. Mendel realized that most traits were derived independently of each other; later scientists concurred but also showed that several genes can yield one trait and that these genes share a link that differs in degree.

Haldane, working with mice, was one of the first scientists to show this linkage in mammalian genetics. He also derived a mapping function that would allow for the calculation of distances between the different genetic links.

In order to theorize about the genetic make-up of populations, a host of factors had to be taken into account, from migration and isolation to inbreeding, random mating, and the intensity of selection of individual traits. Haldane argued that even small environmental changes could have an impact on organisms and lead to the appearance of variation as investigated by Mendel. The accumulation of these changes might, Haldane argued, explain the entire process of evolution. Though the mathematical computations that he used to arrive at his conclusions only appear in an appendix to The Causes of Evolution, they established his synthesis of Darwin and Mendel as a cornerstone of modern evolutionary theory.

A prolific writer known for his clear and engaging style, Haldane published an assortment of essays and books that found an audience throughout his career and beyond. One of his most popular works, Daedalus; or, Science and the Future (1924), attempts to prefigure directions that science may take in the future. Haldane foresaw stable industrial societies becoming the norm, despite the probable exhaustion of oil and coal. Other natural resources, however, such as power from water, wind, and the sun will be harnessed, he suggested. In the totally urbanized future that he envisioned, agriculture will be unnecessary, as people will instead eat synthetic food designed to provide all of the necessary nutrients.

Another of Haldane’s popular works was the essay “The Origin of Life” (1929), in which Haldane proposed a theory for the rise of life on Earth deriving from a combination of a reduced atmosphere, primordial ooze, and the effect of radioactive waves on inanimate organic matter. As molecules were synthesized, complex life forms eventually arose from these basic building blocks.

The Soviet biochemist Aleksandr Oparin had proposed a similar model with only minor differences a few years before Haldane, though both men worked independently of each other. The heterotrophic model remains a remarkable and well-regarded explanation for the origin of life.

The short essay “On Being the Right Size” (1926) demonstrates Haldane’s skill in extrapolating simple observations into biological principles. His argument was essentially that the size of an organism determines the abilities that it will have as well as its chances for survival. Large animals, for example, can keep warm more easily than small animals can. The theory was also applied to individual organs, such as the brain and the eye, for which larger size determines greater intelligence and better vision, respectively.

Impact

Haldane wrote prolifically on matters of popular science and enjoyed significant influence in both the scientific community and the culture at large. His views on the principles governing evolution, such as mutation and resistance to disease, have proved influential in both science and science fiction. One such idea that Haldane set forward was the possibility of ectogenesis, the development and birth of humans outside of the womb. English writer Aldous Huxley, a friend of Haldane’s, gave dramatic form to this idea in his famous novel Brave New World, in which babies are produced in test tubes in a dystopian future.

Haldane’s vision of science in the future included an awareness of the potentially destructive aspects of science. He believed in human progress through science but did not believe that the progress would be linear or completely beneficial. Haldane expected that pressing ethical questions would have to be posited as science progressed, though he maintained an essentially optimistic view of humankind’s potential for positive development.

Bibliography

Dronamraju, Krishna R. “J. B. S. Haldane’s Last Years: His Life and Work in India (1957–4).”

Genetics 185.1 (May 2010): 5–10. Print. Presents a biographical overview of Haldane’ life, focusing especially on his work and experiences during his final years in India.

---, ed. What I Require from Life: Writings on Science and Life from J. B. S. Haldane. New York: Oxford UP, 2009. Print. Presents essays from various periods of Haldane’s career that discuss cultural and scientific topics from Marxist and Buddhist perspectives.

Haldane, J. B. S. Possible Worlds. 1927. New Brunswick: Transaction, 2000. Print. Collects essays by Haldane in which he discusses the relations between science and society and clarifies scientific developments for a lay audience.