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The Rockefeller Foundation and spectroscopy research: The programs at Chicago and Utrecht

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  1. There is a large literature that details the origins and effects of Weaver's program. The Rockefeller Foundation's own perspective has been given in WarrenWeaver,Scene of Change (New York: Scribners, 1970), and Raymond D. Fosdick,The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation (New York: Harper, 1952). Analyses of the Foundation's policies have been provided by scholars: On the role of technology transfer from the physical sciences to biology, see Pnina Abir-Am, “The Discourse of Physical Power and Biological Knowledge in the 1930s: A Reappraisal of the Rockefeller Foundation's ‘Policy’ in Molecular Biology,”Soc. Stud. Sci., 12 (1982), 341–382; E. J. Yoxen, “Scepticism about the Centrality of Technology Transfer in the Rockefeller Foundation Programme in Molecular Biology,”Soc. Stud. Sci., 14 (1984), 248–252; Lily Kay, “The Tiselius Electrophoresis Apparatus and the Life Sciences 1930–1945,”Hist. Phil. Life Sci., 10 (1988), 51–72. On the relationship of the Natural Sciences program to the development of the field of molecular biology, see Abir-Am, “Discourse;” Robert Olby,The Path to the Double Helix (London: Macmillan, 1974); John A. Fuerst, “The Definition of Molecular Biology and the Definition of Policy: The Role of the Rockefeller Foundation's Policy for Molecular Biology,”Soc. Stud. Sci., 14 (1984), 225–237; Ditta Bartels, “The Rockefeller Foundation's Funding Policy for Molecular Biology: Success or Failure?” ibid., pp. 238–243; Pnina Abir-Am, “Beyond Deterministic Sociology and Apologetic History: Reassessing the Impact of Research Policy upon New Scientific Disciplines (Reply to Fuerst, Bartels, Olby, and Yoxen),” ibid., pp. 252–263. On the philosophical bases of the Foundation's program, see John A. Fuerst, “The Role of Reductionism in the Development of Molecular Biology: Peripheral or Central?”Soc. Stud. Sci., 12 (1982), 241–278; E. J. Yoxen, “Giving Life a New Meaning,” inScientific Establishments and Hierarchies, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, vol. VI, ed. N. Elias, H. Martins, and R. Whitley (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1982), pp. 123–143. On the style of research patronage developed within the Foundation, see Robert Kohler, “The Management of Science: The Experience of Warren Weaver and the Rockefeller Foundation Programme in Molecular Biology,”Minerva, 14 (1976), 279–306; idem,Partners in Science: Foundations and Natural Scientists 1900–1945 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

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  2. When the Foundation was reorganized in 1928, it had four separate division to support different types of research — natural sciences, medical sciences, social sciences, and humanities — each with its own division head and staff. There was also an operating division for international health, which carried out public health projects around the world.

  3. The term “mixed marriage” appears in a Natural Sciences division review of the Utrecht project in 1949, Rockefeller Foundation Archives (hereafter cited as RFA), Arch. 2, Series 650D, Subseries 1957, Rockefeller Archive Center, New York, N.Y.

  4. “Mitogenetic radiation” is the term that was applied to the release of a portion of the chemical energy produced in metabolism as ultraviolet light in dividing cells. This phenomenon was reported by Alexander Gurwitch in 1923. The actual occurrence of such radiation was the object of considerable controversy in the 1920s and 1930s. Though some scientists strongly believed in its existence, a large number of investigations, some of them employing spectroscopic analysis of a variety of dividing cells, could produce no firm evidence in support of mitogenetic radiation. The idea was abandoned by the end of the 1930s. See AlexanderKohn,False Prophets (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), pp. 22–26.

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  5. Hollaender, a physical chemist educated at the University of Wisconsin, had just completed a National Research Council fellowship during which he had studied the relationship between radiant energy and biological systems. He was awarded a S1500 stipend by the Foundation in February 1934 to carry out this project using the library resources of the Rockefeller Institute, the New York Academy of Medicine, and Columbia University. When the bibliography was completed seven months later, it contained more than three thousand entries; it was felt to be so useful that the Foundation made copies of it available to interested scientists in the United States and Europe.

  6. This work was being conducted at Michigan by O. S. Duffendack, a physicist, and L. H. Newburg and F. H. Wiley in the Medical School. It received a total of $22,000 for three years (1934–37).

  7. A series of four grants totaling just over $11,000 were awarded, starting in 1934, to allow work to proceed on improving a spectrophotometer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology so that it could provide detailed and accurate studies of the iron and hemoglobin content of normal and abnormal blood. The emphasis here was on the development of the technique and not on its medical applications.

  8. Mason to Weaver, telegram, January 12, 1934, RFA, RG 1.1, Series 216D, Box 12, Folder 166.

  9. F. P.ZscheileJr., T. R.Hogness, and T. F.Young, “The Precision and Accuracy of a Photoelectric Method for Comparison of the Low Light Intensities Involved in Measurement of Absorption and Fluorescence Spectra,”J. Phys. Chem., 38 (1934), 1–11; F. P. Zscheile, Jr., “A Quantitative Spectrophotoelectric Analytical Method Applied to Solutions of Chlorophyllsa andb,”J. Phys. Chem., 38 (1934), 95–102; F. P. Zscheile, Jr., “An Improved Method for the Purification of Chlorophylls A and B; Quantitative Measurement of Their Absorption Spectra: Evidence for the Existence of a Third Component of Chlorophyll,”Bot. Gaz., 95 (1934), 529–562.

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  10. Elmer S.Miller, “Quantitative Absorption of Spectra of the Common Carotenoids,”Plant Physiol., 9 (1934), 693–694; Elmer S. Miller, “A Rapid and Accurate Quantitative Method for the Determination of the Common Carotenoids; Analysis of Beta-Carotene and Leaf Xanthophyll in Thirteen Plant Tissues,”J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 57 (1935), 347–349.

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  11. Warren Weaver officer's diary, January 18 and 19, 1934, RFA, RG 12.1.

  12. Ibid. In support of this view, Weaver noted in the log that Miller had claimed that with Rockefeller Foundation support, they would be able to “clean up the vitamin work” in one year.

  13. Warren Weaver to Frank R. Lillie, January 22, 1934, RFA, RG 1.1, Series 216D, Box 12, Folder 166.

  14. John R. Hogness, personal communication. It is not clear at what point in the negotiations Weaver made this case to Hogness.

  15. E. S. Miller to Weaver, January 20, 1934, and Lillie to Weaver, January 25, 1936, RFA, RG 1.1, Series 216D, Box 12, Folder 166.

  16. Project 34020, approved February 16, 1934, RFA, RG 1.1, Series 216D, Box 12, Folder 166.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Warren Weaver officer's diary, July 9, 1934, RFA, RG 12.1.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Fred C. Koch and Thorfin R. Hogness to Lillie, February 25, 1935 (transmitted to Weaver by Frederic Woodward, vice-president of the University of Chicago, February 28, 1935), RFA, RG 1.1, Series 216D, Box 12, Folder 167.

  21. See, for example, the study of atomic and molecular fragments produced in gases reported in T. R.Hogness and R. W.Harkness, “The Ionization Processes of Iodine Interpreted by the Mass-Spectrograph,”Phys. Rev., 32 (1928), 784–790; and the work on polymerization of gas molecules that appeared in T. R. Hogness and Liu-Sheng Ts'ai, “The Photochemical Polymerization of Cyanogen,”J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 34 (1932), 123–129.

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  22. This was Erwin Haas. Haas had been an assistant to Otto Warburg for ten years when he was brought to Chicago by Hogness in 1938. He was later awarded a doctorate in chemistry by the University of Chicago.

  23. Representative publications include: T. R.Hogness, A. E.SidwellJr., and F. P.ZscheileJr., “The Absorption Spectra of Compounds Related to the Sterols,”J. Biol. Chem., 120 (1937), 239–256; A. E. Sidwell, Jr., R. H. Munch, E. S. Guzman Barron, and T. R. Hogness, “The Salt Effect on the Hemoglobin-Oxygen Equilibrium,”J. Biol. Chem., 123 (1938), 335–350; Erwin Haas, B. L. Horecker, and T. R. Hogness, “The Enzymatic Reduction of Cytochrome C: Cytochrome C Reductase,”J. Biol. Chem., 136 (1940), 747–774.

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  24. H. M. Miller diary, June 7, 1934, RFA, RG 12.1.

  25. For descriptions of Ornstein's career and contributions seeL. S. Ornstein: A Survey of His Work from 1908 to 1933, Dedicated to Him by His Fellow-Workers and Pupils (Utrecht, 1933); R. C. Mason, “Obituary: Leonard Salomon Ornstein,”Science, 102 (1945), 638–639.

  26. A. F.Kamp, J. W. M.LaRiviere, and W.Verhoeven,Albert Jan Kluyver, His Life and Work (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1959). See p. 20 for Kluyver's statement on biochemical unity: “From elephant to butyric acid bacterium — it is all the same.”

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  27. H. M. Miller diary (above, n. 24).

  28. L. S. Ornstein and A. J. Kluyver to W. E. Tisdale, October 19, 1934, RFA, Arch. 2, Series 650D, Box R1097, University of Utrecht, Physical Laboratory, 1934 (unprocessed material).

  29. Ornstein and Kluyver to Tisdale, November 2, 1934, ibid.

  30. Ornstein was prohibited from entering his institute in November 1940, following the German invasion. He died May 20, 1941, in Utrecht, of a heart attack. See Paul Forman, “Leonard S. Ornstein,”Dict. Sci. Biog., 10: 235–236.

  31. Pieter Smit, “Albert Jan Kluyver,”Dict. Sci. Biog., 7: 405–407.

  32. The Biophysical Research Group, based at Utrecht, was often called the Biophysical Research Group of Utrecht/Delft to reflect the joint involvement of both institutions. In its early years, the names of the authors on a paper coming from this group were generally followed by a statement of affiliation as follows: “Biophysical Research Group under the direction of L. S. Ornstein, Utrecht, and A. J. Kluyver, Delft”.

  33. Hogness to Weaver, January 28, 1936, RFA, RG 1.1, Series 216D, Box 12, Folder 168.

  34. Hogness fellowship report on visit to Kluyver, August 16, 1937, RFA, Arch. 2, Series 650D, Box R1097, University of Utrecht, Physical Laboratory, 1936 and 1937 (unprocessed material).

  35. H. M. Miller diary, October 26 and 27, 1936, RFA, RG 12.1.

  36. A. F.Kamp, J. W. M.LaRiviere, and W.Verhoeven,Albert Jan Kluyver, His Life and Work (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1959). pp. 32–33.

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  37. Overall, there is no support here for the view, expressed in Abir-Am, “Discourse” WarrenWeaver,Scene of Change (New York: Scribners, 1970), pp. 350–351, that the biological partner was subordinated to or dominated by the partner with physical sciences expertise in collaborations initiated by the Natural Sciences division. Whatever the Foundation's intention may have been, the presence of an active, contributing biological partner was critical to the success of these projects. When this did not occur (as in the Harvard/MIT project), or during the periods when there was no partner available (as in the Chicago project), scientific work was impeded.

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  38. Weaver to Hogness and Koch, March 23, 1936, RFA, RG 1.1, Series 216D, Box 12, Folder 168.

  39. Among the papers on respiratory chain carriers are: ElmerStotz, A. E.SidwellJr., and T. R.Hogness, “The Spectrophotometric Determination of the Equilibrium in Oxidation-Reduction Systems: The Potential of Cytochrome C,”J. Biol. Chem., 124 (1938), 11–23; Aaron M. Altschul and T. R. Hogness, “Spectroscopic Evidence for the Existence of Carboxycytochrome C,”J. Biol. Chem., 124 (1938), 25–31; Aaron M. Altschul, Richard Abrams, and T. R. Hogness, “Cytochrome C Peroxidase,”J. Biol. Chem., 136 (1940), 777–794; Erwin Haas, “Cytochrome Oxidase,”J. Biol. Chem., 148 (1943), 481–493.

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  40. Tisdale, in writing to Weaver of a conversation he had had with Kluyver, reported that “at first the two biologists were very much lost in O[rnstein]'s place, and the physics associates were some what at sea from the biological side. K[luyver] tells me that now, however, there is the best of relations among all the workers. In addition, he [Kluyver] as a biologist felt that he knew something about accuracy in experimentation, but that he had his eyes opened very widely by O[rnstein]'s insistence upon continual checks on intensity measurements of his radiating sources, and ... by Ornstein's attention to variations in physical phenomena which the biologist would ordinarily assume as constant” (Tisdale to Weaver, July 24, 1935, RFA, Arch. 2, Series 650D, Subseries 1935, Box R1097 (unprocessed material)).

  41. BesselKok and GeorgeHoch, “Spectral Changes in Photosynthesis,” inLight and Life, ed. William D.McElroy and BentleyGlass (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1961), pp. 397–423.

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  42. Ornstein and Kluyver to Tisdale, October 19, 1934, RFA, Arch. 2, Series 650D, Box R1097, University of Utrecht, Physical Laboratory, 1934 (unprocessed material).

  43. Kohler,Partners in Science (above, n. 1); the quotations appear on pp. 312, 370, and 367, respectively. Methodological factors and an inaccurate data point may account for Kohler's flawed assessment of the Utrecht/Delft project: (1) His decision to emphasize “the evolving partnership between partrons and recipients” (p. 2) and the “social system itself ... not its effects on something else” (p. 3), and to deemphasize “bench research” (p. 2), has resulted in an exclusion of lines of evidence such as contributions to the scientific literature, scientific citations, etc., that would reveal the actual scientific work accomplished and provide a measure of research productivity. (2) Figure 13.1 (p. 359) contains an error: the Utrecht/Delft project is shown as ending in the early forties when it was, in fact, funded by the Foundation until 1957.

  44. Warren Weaver officer's diary, April 28, 1948, RFA, RG 12.1 (emphasis in the original).

  45. Ornstein and Kluyver to Tisdale, October 19, 1934, RFA, Arch. 2, Series 650D, Box R1097, University of Utrecht, Physical Laboratory, 1934 (unprocessed material).

  46. Tisdale to Ornstein and Kluyver, October 22, 1934, ibid.

  47. Annual Report (New York: Rockefeller Foundation, 1935), pp. 146–147.

  48. This work was described in Wassink's account of the earliest work of the group: E. C.Wassink, “Chlorophyll Fluorescence and Photosynthesis,”Adv. Enzymol., 11 (1951), 119–150.

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  49. Proposed Action for grant RF 35143, 1/1/36 to 12/1/37, prepared by Tisdale, RFA, Arch. 2, Series 650D, Box R1097, University of Utrecht, Physical Laboratory, 1935 (unprocessed material).

  50. Minutes of the Trustees meeting, p. 35355, excerpt September 27, 1935, RFA, Arch. 2, Series 650D, Box R1097, University of Utrecht, Physical Laboratory, 1935 (unprocessed material).

  51. Kluyver and Ornstein to Tisdale, March 10, 1937, RFA, Arch. 2, Series 650D, Box R1097, University of Utrecht, Physical Laboratory, 1936 and 1937 (unprocessed material).

  52. Tisdale to Weaver, August 25, 1937, RFA, ibid.

  53. Since it is highly unlikely that scientists of the caliber of Kluyver and Ornstein would have misrepresented this point, it appears that Tisdale simply misunderstood what their scientific project was about.

  54. A. F.Kamp, J. W. M.LaRiviere, and W.Verhoeven,Albert Jan Kluyver, His Life and Work (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1959), p. 33.

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  1. Science Studies Center, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 24061-0227, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

    Doris T. Zallen

  2. Humanities Center, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 24061-0227, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

    Doris T. Zallen

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Zallen, D.T. The Rockefeller Foundation and spectroscopy research: The programs at Chicago and Utrecht. J Hist Biol 25, 67–89 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01947505

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