New Delhi: “Facially Professor Haldane resembled Rudyard Kipling; epigrammatically he took after George Bernard Shaw; politically he followed Karl Marx; but in science, he was indubitably John Burdon Sanderson Haldane,” wrote The New York Times in its obituary for noted British-born geneticist, biologist and mathematician J.B.S. Haldane.
Haldane, who died in Odisha on 1 December 1964 at age 72, was a polymath whose work paved the way for research in evolutionary biology and many other branches of science. Despite not having any formal degree in the sciences, he published mathematical papers on Darwinian evolution, suggested the basic idea of IVF technology and cloning, and worked in the field of population genetics, transcending the traditional boundaries of various disciplines.
According to his biographer Ronald Clark, he was “the most erudite biologist of his generation, and perhaps of the century”.
On his 55th death anniversary, ThePrint examines the life and works of one of the most remarkable scientists of the 20th century.
Born on 5 November 1892 at Oxford, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was born and raised in a scientific environment. His Scottish father, John Scott Haldane, was a renowned physiologist famous for self-experimentation in pursuit of research. Young Haldane also played guinea pig in his father’s experiments. His prodigious talents were visible from quite a young age.
At the age of five he was being taught to read the British association’s reports and at 10, he was making simple gas mixtures for his father. Haldane obtained first-class honours in mathematical moderations and classics from the University of Oxford in 1912 and published his first paper at the age of 20.
His education was interrupted during World War I, in which he was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant. After the war, he returned to research and became a Fellow at the New College, Oxford, from 1919 to 1922. In 1922 he moved to the University of Cambridge where he taught until 1932 and simultaneously worked on enzymes and genetics. A colleague at Cambridge remarked that “he seemed to be the last man who might know all there was to be known”. Later, he taught Genetics at University College London.
British sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke once said, “J.B.S. Haldane was perhaps the most brilliant science populariser of his generation.” Haldane realised that making science popular was a necessary condition to spread it among the masses. That is why he wrote articles with simple titles such as ‘Vitamins’, ‘Enzymes’, ‘Darwinism Today’ and ‘What Use Is Astronomy’, which were published in leading publications.
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A nuisance and proud of it
Drawn to politics at Oxford, Haldane became a member of the Liberal club and started taking part in debates. He described himself as a Marxist and a rationalist (atheist). He identified as a socialist during the First World War and, in 1937, supported the Communist Party of Great Britain openly. He once remarked, “I had gastritis for about 15 years until I read Lenin and other writers who showed me what was wrong with our society and how to cure it. Since then I have needed no magnesia.”
However, by the end of World War II, he was disillusioned by the regime and left the party in 1950. In 1957, he left Britain and came to India. There are a number of reasons given for this, but the main one was his condemnation of the British regime for the Suez Crisis. He joined the Indian Statistical Institute in (Kolkata) in 1957 as a research professor and worked there till 1961. He later moved to Odisha with the aim of building an Institute for Genetics and Biometry.
When American sci-fi anthologist Groff Conklin described him as a citizen of the world, he said, “No doubt I am in some sense a citizen of the world. But I believe with Thomas Jefferson that one of the chief duties of a citizen is to be a nuisance to the government of his state. As there is no world state, I cannot do this. On the other hand, I can be, and am, a nuisance to the government of India, which has the merit of permitting a good deal of criticism, though it reacts to it rather slowly. I also happen to be proud of being a citizen of India, which is a lot more diverse than Europe, let alone the U.S.A, the U.S.S.R or China, and thus a better model for a possible world organisation. It may of course break up, but it is a wonderful experiment. So, I want to be labeled as a citizen of India.”
A man of science even after he died
His work in population genetics, especially deriving methods for estimating human mutation rates and genetic damage resulting from radiation, led to the ban on open-air testing of nuclear weapons. His research also laid the foundation for finding causes of malaria as well as thalassemia.
Like his father, he was ready to go to any extent for research, even if it meant inhaling poisonous gases to study their effect on human biology. Through self-experimentation, he studied the effect of inhaling toxic mixtures of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide on human physiology under varying atmospheric pressures and temperatures under seawater, which became instrumental in marine and space research.
In 1964, Haldane died of cancer. Ever dedicated to research, he had already decided to donate his body.
In Haldane’s words, “Our only hope of understanding the universe is to look at it from as many different points of view as possible. This is one of the reasons why the data of mystical consciousness can usefully supplement those of the mind in its normal state. Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose”.
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I read whole of the article, there was no mention, that JBS Haldane was the first scientist who purposed that life started on earth through inorganic matter. Which was later proved by Miller and urey. They got the noble prize for proving the theory of JBS Haldane.
The article was to point out his political views. I feel in past century Britian had good intellectuals who had a sense of what went around the world and took care of it. The other chap I like is Bertrand Russell. I feel for society to progress its scientists need to speak and change the narrative from religion first to science and humanity first.