Designs for Life: Molecular Biology after World War II

by Soraya de Chadarevian

• ISBN13: 9780521570787
• ISBN10: 0521570786
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-06-24
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Molecular biology has come to dominate our perceptions of life, health and disease. In the decades following World War II, the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge was a world-renowned centre of this emerging discipline. It was here that Crick and Watson, Kendrew and Perutz, Sanger and Brenner pursued their celebrated investigations. Soraya de Chadarevian's important new study is the first to examine the creation and expansion of molecular biology through the prism of this remarkable institution. Firmly placing the history of the laboratory in its broader institutional and scientific context, she shows how molecular biology was built at the lab bench and through the wide circulation of tools, models and researchers, as well as in governmental committees, international exhibitions and television studios. Designs for Life is a major contribution both to the history of molecular biology, and to the history of science and technology in post-war Britain. Nominated as one of the top 5 Science books of 2002 by The Sunday Times.

Author Biography

Soraya de Chadarevian is Senior Research Associate and Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I. Postwar Reconstruction and Biophysics: 1. World War II and the mobilisation of British scientists

2. Reconstructing life

3. Proteins, crystals and computers

4. Televisual language

Part II. Building Molecular Biology: 5. Locating the double helix

6. Disciplinary moves

7. The origins of molecular biology revisited

Part III. Bench Work and Politics: 8. Laboratory cultures

9. On the governmental agenda

10. The end of an era

Conclusions.