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From Multidisciplinary Collaboration to Transnational Objectivity: International Space as Constitutive of Molecular Biology, 1930–1970

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Denationalizing Science

Part of the book series: Sociology of the Sciences A Yearbook ((SOSC,volume 16))

Abstract

Ever since its inception in the 1930s, and until its ultimate institutionalization as a new integrative or umbrella discipline in the 1960s, molecular biology has primarily constituted itself in an international space, defined by an ongoing streamline of meetings of various sizes and degrees of in/formality, a preponderance of collaborative efforts and convoluted correspondence networks across many countries (1). Indeed, though all the early self-proclaimed membership of molecular biologists has aligned itself into several distinct groupings, or research schools, each revolving around its own constellation of nationally anchored science policy structures, institutional ecologies, disciplinary orientations, and charismatic leaders; in all cases, a substantial portion of each research school’s social composition and major conceptual legacy reflected the integral role of transnational affiliates, whether as visitors or as permanently naturalized émigrés (2).

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Notes

  1. See numerous references on the origins of molecular biology in P.G. Abir-Am, “Themes, genres and orders of legitimation in the consolidation of new disciplines: Deconstructing the historiography of molecular biology,” History of Science, 1985, 23: 73–117, which also includes a detailed review of the three available books to date on the history of molecular biology: R.C. Olby, The Path to the Double Helix (London: Macmillan, 1974): H. Sajet, L’essor de la biologie’ moléculaire, 19511–1965 (Paris: CNRS. 1978): H.F. Judson. The Eighth Dar of Creation: The Makers of the Revolution in Biology (New York: Basic Books. 1979). This topic is further updated in R.C. Olby. The molecular revolution in biology,“ in R.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor. J.R.R. Christie and M.J.S. Hodge, eds.. A Companion to History of Science (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 503–520, and P.G. Abir-Am, ”Noblesse oblige: Lives of molecular biologists,“ ISIS, 1991, 82: 326–343.

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  3. The theoretical apparatus used to articulate the interdependence of conceptual, social and political dimensions of scientific change in general, and its applicability to the problem of the origins of molecular biology in particular has been discussed in P.G. Abir-Am, “The Biotheoretical Gathering, transdisciplinary authority and the incipient legitimation of mole­cular biology in the 1930s: New perspective in the historical sociology of science”, History of Science, 1987, 25:1–70, an abridged version of Abir-Am, “The Biotheoretical Gathering in England, 1932–1938 and the origins of molecular biology: An essay on the construction, legitimation and authority of transdisciplinary knowledge in a historical context” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Montreal, 1983/4), 600 pp.

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  21. Abir-Am. “The first protein X-ray photo.”

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  1. Johns Hopkins University, USA

    Pnina Abir-Am

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  1. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Strasbourg, France

    Elisabeth Crawford

  2. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France

    Terry Shinn

  3. University of Umeå, Sweden

    Sverker Sörlin

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Abir-Am, P. (1993). From Multidisciplinary Collaboration to Transnational Objectivity: International Space as Constitutive of Molecular Biology, 1930–1970. In: Crawford, E., Shinn, T., Sörlin, S. (eds) Denationalizing Science. Sociology of the Sciences A Yearbook, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1221-7_6

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