International Science Between the World Wars

The Case of Genetics

Nikolai Krementsov

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134267996
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: World History

What is international science and how does it function? This book answers these questions through a detailed study of international congresses on genetics held from 1899 to 1939. It presents a portrait of international science as a product of continuous interactions that involved scientists and their patrons within specific political, ideological, and disciplinary contexts. Drawing on a variety of archival sources - ranging from Stalin's personal papers to the records of the Gestapo and from the correspondence among scientists in different countries to the minutes of the Soviet government's top-secret meetings - it depicts the operations of international science at a time of great political tensions.
Krementsov breaks with the view of science as either inherently national or quintessentially international, examining instead the intersection between national and international agendas in scientists' activities. Focusing on the dramatic history of the Seventh international genetics congress, he investigates contradictions inherent to scientists' dual loyalties to their country and their science. Through analysis of negotiations among three groups of actors involved with the organization of the congress, Krementsov examines the role of ideologies, patronage, and personal networks in the operations of international science.

Part I

International genetics congresses, 1899–1939

Genetics as a discipline was born in the heyday of “scientific internationalism” in the first decade of the twentieth century. During this time science was considered to be international by its very nature—scientific facts and concepts were seen as universal. Science seemed to be an enterprise independent of locale, which could be studied in one place and practiced in another. Most scientists thought of themselves as citizens of the world, loyal not to the particular country they happened to reside in, but to an ideal “republic of letters” that united them all. The migration of scientists and exchange of ideas were treated as essential to the advancement of science. Standards of scientific excellence were seen as universal: not incidentally, exactly at this time, the Nobel Prize—the highest scientific award given to scientists irrespective of their country of origin—was instituted.

In 1914, World War I tore apart the rich tapestry of international scientific relations developed during the previous decades, driving scientists of different countries into “hostile political camps.”¹ The aftermath of the war was marked by boycotts (and counterboycotts) of German and Austrian science.² But by the mid-1920s, scientists seemed to have overcome the war legacy and had returned to the practices of “international science,” resuming exchanges of people and ideas and loudly proclaiming their adherence to the ideals of scientific internationalism. This situation continued until World War II, and then the Cold War that came in its wake, once again divided the world's scientists into opposing camps.

The history of genetics, however, does not fit easily into this neat picture of science as an international endeavor that would go on and on if it were not interrupted by major cataclysms such as world wars that demanded scientists' undivided loyalty to their countries to the detriment of loyalty to their imaginary “republic of letters.” The story of the international genetics congresses indicates that even during the time of peace between the world wars, international relations in genetics were heavily imbued by the conflicts inherent to scientists' dual loyalties—to their science and to their country.

1 Genetics as an international science

Building an international discipline

Scientists engaged in studies of heredity maintained close contacts through correspondence and personal encounters at various international forums, most importantly conferences on plant breeding.³ The first such conference, later hailed as the First international genetics congress, met in London in 1899. Initiated by William Bateson and held under the auspices of the Royal Horticultural Society, the conference was called the “international conference on hybridization (the cross-breeding of species) and on the cross-breeding of varieties.”⁴ During two days, on July 11 and 12, about one hundred thirty participants heard fourteen reports. Only six countries were represented at the meeting: France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Switzerland, and the United States.

The next meeting convened 3 years later across the Atlantic in New York City under the name “International Conference on Plant Breeding and Hybridization.”⁵ During three days, September 30–October 2, 1902, some seventy-five representatives from nearly a dozen countries met under the auspices of the Horticultural Society of New York. Although the number of participants at this conference was smaller than at the previous one, the number of presentations more than doubled: thirty addresses were presented and thirteen papers read by title. Furthermore, it was at this conference that William Bateson, his close friend and colleague Charles C. Hurst, and Hugo de Vries delivered reports on Mendel's “laws” of heredity.

Four years later, in 1906, this forum again assembled in London. About forty papers were listed in the program and forty-six published in the proceedings, along with descriptions of twenty-two special exhibits.⁶ Almost three hundred delegates from thirteen countries had been invited to come to Britain. It was this meeting that for the first time assumed the name of the “international conference on genetics.” In fact, the conference had been initially advertised and convened as an “international conference on hybridization and plant breeding.”⁷ But, in his inaugural address, its president William Bateson suggested that the emerging field of “the elucidation of the phenomena of heredity and variation” be named “genetics.”⁸ Apparently, this suggestion was welcomed and the conference proceedings were issued as the “Report on the third international conference on genetics.” Furthermore, despite the remnants of the old name in the proceedings' subtitle—“hybridization (the cross-breeding of genera or species), the cross-breeding of varieties, and general plant-breeding”—the conference, for the first time, included several reports on animal genetics.

Bateson's suggestion of a new name for the studies of heredity and its eventual acceptance by the international community was far from accidental. For many years, heredity had been a subject of intensive studies by practitioners in a number of fields, including plant and animal breeding, cytology, eugenics, biometry, and embryology. The “rediscovery” of Mendel's laws offered a new approach to the phenomena of heredity based on the assumption that particular hereditary traits were transmitted from one generation to another by certain discrete “units” or “factors,” which were inherited separately from each other and which the Danish geneticist Wilhelm Johannsen later named “genes.” This approach, initially christened in honor of its originator “Mendelism,” was enthusiastically embraced by a number of students of heredity, with Bateson as its most active “apostle.”⁹ However, Mendelism advocated by Bateson provoked sharp criticism from other students of heredity, notably a school of biometricians headed by W. F. R. Weldon and Karl Pearson. The main point of the controversy between Mendelians and biometricians was that Mendel's laws had been discovered and were subsequently demonstrated in the studies of qualitative (discontinuous) traits, such as the color of flowers or the shape of seeds. For biometricians, who were mostly preoccupied with quantitative(continuous) traits, such as the height of a plant or the weight of its fruits, any application of Mendel's laws to their subject seemed impossible.¹⁰ The controversy raged with particular force in Britain, where it was exacerbated by the personal animosity and institutional rivalry between the leaders of two schools, while in other countries it was much less poignant.¹¹

It seems likely that the controversy moved Bateson to invent a new name for the emerging discipline.¹² As social historians have convincingly argued, to succeed on the social scene, any group needs to resolve two distinct, but often interconnected problems: the internal problem of consensus and the external problem of legitimacy.¹³ Applying this hypothesis to the process of discipline-building, one can suggest that Bateson's invention of a new name for the fledging discipline of genetics paved a way to the solution of both problems.¹⁴ The new name was sufficiently neutral and allowed proponents of different approaches to hereditary phenomena to work together and hence to gradually develop necessary consensus over methods, tools, explanatory hypotheses, and research agendas of the new discipline. On the other hand, it seems probable that Bateson quite deliberately proposed the new name at an international conference in order to give the new discipline an international legitimacy and thus to distance genetics from domestic squabbles with the opponents of Mendelism.¹⁵

This strategy obviously paid off. Genetics began rapidly to acquire a disciplinary form. In 1908, in Berlin, Erwin Baur founded the first specialized journal in the field—Zeitschrift für induktive Abstammungs- und Vererbungslehre (Journal for the Inductive Study of Evolution and Heredity). The next year, a chair of genetics was created in Cambridge University, and Bateson's collaborator Reginald C. Punnett became the world's first professor of genetics. A year later, in 1910, the John Innes Horticultural Institution was founded in London with Bateson as its first director. The same year, Punnett established the Journal of Genetics. Although both British and German genetics journals focused on Mendelian genetics, they also published works by researchers who employed biometric or embryological approach and welcomed contributions by scientists from various countries.

When the next year, 1911, the Fourth international conference on genetics convened in Paris, it brought together nearly two hundred fifty delegates from seventeen countries. Fifty-eight reports were included in the proceedings.¹⁶ It was at this conference that a further institutionalization of genetics as an international discipline took place. On September 23, at the end of the last session, the conference president Yves Delage announced that there was one more item on the conference agenda: the delegates should decide on the question of the place and date for the next, Fifth conference. Unlike at all the previous meetings, however, in Paris two countries appeared to be competing for the privilege to host the international gathering—both US and German geneticists extended an invitation. To deal with the problem, it was suggested to follow the example of international congresses in botany and zoology and to set up a “permanent committee for international genetics conferences.”¹⁷ The delegates felt that “the periodic international conferences should be tied to each other through a continuously active

Plate 1 The Fourth international genetics congress in Paris, 1911: (left to right) E. von Tschermark, W. Bateson, W. Johannsen, Y Delage, and Ph. de Vilmorin. (From Ph. de Vilmorin (ed.) IV Conférence Internationale de Génétique, Paris, 1911, Paris: Massonet Co., 1913.)

entity and a homogeneous leadership possessing the authority necessary to make binding decisions.” They unanimously elected representatives of nine countries— William Bateson from Great Britain as president, Erwin Baur from Germany, Erich von Tschermak from Austria, Wilhelm Johannsen from Denmark, Philip de Vilmorin from France, Jan P. Lotsy from Holland, N. H. Nilson-Elle from Sweden, Walter T. Swingle from the United States, and A. Lang from Switzerland—to the membership of the first international committee that was “charged with deciding on everything that concerns the general interests of the international genetics congresses.” It was left to this committee to decide when and where—in the United States or Germany—the next congress would be held.

Of course, the practitioners of genetics did not neglect the opportunity to meet at other international gatherings both to promote their new field and to maintain links with established disciplines. International congresses in such traditional fields as zoology and botany provided a forum for those involved with the genetics of animals and plants, respectively. For instance, at the Second international botanical congress held in 1905 in Vienna, Erich von Tschermak delivered a long report on his Mendelian research.¹⁸ Two years later, at the Seventh international zoological congress assembled in Boston in late August 1907, a large session was devoted solely to the issues of cytology and heredity with twenty-five reports. In Bateson's (perhaps biased and exaggerated) opinion, “Heredity, Cytology, and experimental zoology have kept the whole Congress. Nothing else has had any hearing worth the name.”¹⁹ It was at this congress that the first studies of heredity in the fruit fly—Drosophila, an organism that in just a few years would revolutionize genetics research—were presented.²⁰

A similar forum for those interested in human genetics appeared at the First international eugenics congress. Eugenics—literally “being well born”—had emerged in the mid-1880s as a field aimed at the biological improvement of the human kind, largely due to the efforts of Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton.²¹ Following his cousin's evo...