J. B. S. Haldane

J. B. S. Haldane
J. B. S. Haldane
Born	November 5, 1892 Oxford, England
Died	December 1, 1964 Bhubaneswar, India
Residence	UK, USA, India
Nationality	British (until 1961), Indian
Field	Biologist
Institutions	University of Cambridge, UC Berkeley, University College, London
Alma mater	Oxford University
Academic advisor	Frederick Gowland Hopkins
Notable students	John Maynard Smith
Known for	Population genetics, Enzymology
Notable prizes	Darwin Medal (1952)
Note that Cambridge did not have PhD degrees until 1919. So Haldane obtained an M.A., but then directly worked under Hopkins who was the equivalent of a doctoral mentor.

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS (November 5, 1892 – December 1, 1964), who normally used "J. B. S." as a first name, was a British geneticist and evolutionary biologist. He was one of the founders (along with Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright) of population genetics.

Biography

Haldane was born in Edinburgh, to physiologist John Scott Haldane and Louisa Kathleen Haldane (née Trotter), and descended from Scottish aristocrats (see Haldane family). His younger sister Naomi Mitchison became a writer. His uncle was Richard Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane, Politician and one time Secretary of State for War and his aunt was the author Elizabeth Haldane.

Haldane was educated at Dragon School, Eton College (where he suffered at the hands of a certain amount of bullying at first, but ended up being Captain of the School) and at New College, Oxford.

During the First World War, he served with the Black Watch in France and Iraq. He was initially Bombing Officer for the 3rd Battalion before becoming a Trench Mortar Officer in the 1st. While in the army, he became a socialist, writing "If I live to see an England in which socialism has made the occupation of a grocer as honourable as that of a soldier, I shall die happy."

Between 1919 and 1922 he was a fellow of New College, then moved to Cambridge University until 1932. He then moved to University College, London where he spent most of his academic career. In the late 1950s he moved to India at the invitation of P. C. Mahalanobis. The move was ostensibly a protest against the Suez War, but had been a possibility for some while. He became an Indian citizen.

In 1923 in a talk given in Cambridge, Haldane, foreseeing the exhaustion of coal for power generation in Britain, proposed a network of hydrogen-generating windmills. This is the first proposal of the hydrogen-based renewable energy economy.

In 1924 Haldane met Charlotte Burghes (nee Franken) and the two later married. To do so Charlotte divorced her husband Jack Burghes, causing some controversy.

In 1925, GE Briggs and Haldane derived a new interpretation of the enzyme kinetics law described by Victor Henri in 1903, different from the 1913 Michaelis-Menten equation. Leonor Michaelis and Maud Menten assumed that enzyme (catalyst) and substrate (reactant) are in fast equilibrium with their complex, which then dissociates to yield product and free enzyme. The Briggs-Haldane equation was of the same algebraic form, but their derivation is based on the quasi steady state approximation, that is the concentration(s) of intermediate complex(es) do(es) not change. As a result, the microscopic meaning of the "Michaelis Constant" (km) is different. Although commonly referring it as Michaelis-Menten kinetics, most of the current models actually use the Briggs-Haldane derivation.

Haldane made many contributions to human genetics and was one of the three major figures to develop the mathematical theory of population genetics. He is usually regarded as the third of these in importance, after R. A. Fisher and Sewall Wright. His greatest contribution was in a series of papers on "A Mathematical Theory of Natural and Artificial Selection" which was the major series of papers on the mathematical theory of natural selection. It treated many major cases for the first time, showing the direction and rates of changes of gene frequencies. It also pioneered in investigating the interaction of natural selection with mutation and with migration. Haldane's book, The Causes of Evolution (1932), summarized these results, especially in its extensive appendix. This body of work was a major component of what came to be known as the "modern evolutionary synthesis," reestablishing natural selection as the premier mechanism of evolution by explaining it in terms of the mathematical consequences of Mendelian genetics.

Haldane introduced many quantitative approaches in biology such as in his essay On Being the Right Size. His contributions to theoretical population genetics and statistical human genetics included the first methods using maximum likelihood for estimation of human linkage maps, and pioneering methods for estimating human mutation rates. His was the first to calculate the mutational load caused by recurring mutations at a gene locus, and to introduce the idea of a "cost of natural selection."

Haldane was a keen experimenter, willing to expose himself to danger to obtain data. One experiment involving elevated levels of oxygen saturation triggered a fit which resulted in him suffering crushed vertebrae. In his decompression chamber experiments, he and his volunteers suffered perforated eardrums, but, as Haldane stated in What is Life, "the drum generally heals up; and if a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment."

He was also a famous science populariser like Isaac Asimov, Stephen Jay Gould, or Richard Dawkins. His essay, 'Daedalus or Science and the Future' (1923), was remarkable in predicting many scientific advances but has been criticized for presenting a too idealistic view of scientific progress.

Haldane was very idealistic, and in his youth was a devoted Communist and author of many articles in The Daily Worker. Events in the Soviet Union, such as the rise of the anti-Mendelian agronomist Trofim Lysenko and the crimes of Stalin, caused him to break with the Communist Party later in life. He joined the Communist party in 1937 but left in 1950, shortly after having toyed with standing for Parliament as a Communist Party candidate. However, his support for the Socialist ideal appears to be a pragmatic one. Writing in 1928, in On Being the Right Size, Haldane doubts whether the Socialist principle could be operated on the scale of the British Empire or the United States (or, implicitly, the Soviet Union): "while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge."

He is also known for an observation from his essay, On Being the Right Size, which Jane Jacobs and others have since referred to as Haldane's principle. This is that sheer size very often defines what bodily equipment an animal must have: "Insects, being so small, do not have oxygen-carrying bloodstreams. What little oxygen their cells require can be absorbed by simple diffusion of air through their bodies. But being larger means an animal must take on complicated oxygen pumping and distributing systems to reach all the cells." The conceptual metaphor to animal body complexity has been of use in energy economics and secession ideas.

Haldane was a friend of the author Aldous Huxley, and was the basis for the biologist Shearwater in Huxley's novel Antic Hay. Ideas from Haldane's Daedalus, such as ectogenesis (the development of fetuses in artificial wombs), also influenced Huxley's Brave New World.

The most famous of Haldane's many students, John Maynard Smith, shared his mixture of political and scientific interests.

Haldane died on December 1, 1964. He willed that his body be used for study at the Rangaraya Medical College, Kakinada.

“

My body has been used for both purposes during my lifetime and after my death, whether I continue to exist or not, I shall have no further use for it, and desire that it shall be used by others. Its refrigeration, if this is possible, should be a first charge on my estate

”

Misc

Photograph of a display at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History dedicated to Haldane and his reply when asked to comment on the mind of the Creator

• Wives: Charlotte Burghes (née Franken), Helen Spurway
• He has an Erdős number of 5.
• He is famous also for the response he gave when a clergyman asked him what could be inferred about the mind of the Creator from the works of Creation: "An inordinate fondness for beetles."
• Often quoted for saying, "My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." Haldane is sometimes misquoted as saying, "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine" which should be attributed to Arthur Stanley Eddington.

Publications

• Daedalus; or, Science and the Future (1924), E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc., a paper read to the Heretics, Cambridge, on February 4, 1923
  • second edition (1928), London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.
• A Mathematical Theory of Natural and Artificial Selection, a series of papers beginning in 1924
• G.E. Briggs and J.B.S. Haldane (1925). A note on the kinetics of enzyme action, Biochem. J., 19: 338-339
• Callinicus: A Defence of Chemical Warfare (1925), E. P. Dutton
• Possible Worlds and Other Essays (1927), Harper and Brothers, London: Chatto & Windus 1937 edition, Transaction Publishers 2001 edition: ISBN 0765807157
• Animal Biology (1929) Oxford: Clarendon
• Enzymes (1930), MIT Press 1965 editon with new preface by the author written just prior to his death: ISBN 0262580039
• The Causes of Evolution (1932)
• Science and Human Life (1933), Harper and Brothers, Ayer Co. reprint: ISBN 0836921615
• Science and the Supernatural: Correspondence with Arnold Lunn (1935), Sheed & Ward, Inc,
• Fact and Faith (1934), Watts Thinker's Library
• My Friend Mr Leakey (1937), Vigyan Prasar 2001 reprint: ISBN 8174800298
• Air Raid Precautions (A.R.P.) {1938), Victor Gollancz
• Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences (1939), Random House, Ayer Co. reprint: ISBN 0836911377
• Science and Everyday Life (1940), Macmillan, 1941 Penguin, Ayer Co. 1975 reprint: ISBN 0405065957
• Science in Peace and War (1941), Lawrence & Wishart, ltd
• New Paths in Genetics (1941), George Allen & Unwin
• Heredity & Politics (1943), George Allen & Unwin
• Why Professional Workers should be Communists (1945), London: Communist Party (of Great Britain) In this four page pamphlet, Haldane contends that Communism should appeal to professionals because Marxism is based on the scientific method and Communists hold scientists as important; Haldane subsequently disavowed this position
• Adventures of a Biologist (1947)
• Science Advances (1947), Macmillan
• What is Life? (1947), Boni and Gaer, 1949 edition: Lindsay Drummond
• Everything Has a History (1951), Allen & Unwin
• "Origin of Man," Nature, 176, 169 (1955)
• "Cancer's a Funny Thing": New Statesman, 1964. This is a heartwarming poem (but unfortunately composed during what turned out to be his mortal illness) written to encourage others to consult a doctor when they experience the symptoms it decribes. It begins: "I wish I had the voice of Homer/ To sing of rectal carcinoma,/ Which kills a lot more chaps, in fact,/ Than were bumped off when Troy was sacked." ....and ends "I know that cancer often kills,/ But so do cars and sleeping pills;/ And it can hurt one till one sweats,/ So can bad teeth and unpaid debts./ A spot of laughter, I am sure,/ Often accelerates one’s cure;/ So let us patients do our bit/ To help the surgeons make us fit"

Bibliography

• Bryson (2003) A Short History of Nearly Everything pp. 300-302; ISBN 0-552-99704-8
• Clark, Ronald (1968) JBS: The Life and Work of J.B.S. Haldane ISBN 0-340-04444-6
• Dronamraju, K. R. (editor) (1968) Haldane and Modern Biology Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland.
• Geoffrey Zubay et al, Biochemistry (2nd ed., 1988), enzyme kinetics, pp. 266-272; MacMillan, New York ISBN 0-02-432080-3

External links

• An online copy of Daedalus or Science and the Future
• A review (from a modern perspective) of The Causes of Evolution
• Royal Society citation
• Unofficial SJG Archive - People - JBS Haldane (1892-1964) Accessed 22 February 2006. Useful text but the likeness is not of JBS but of his father John Scott Haldane.
• Haldane's contributions to science in India
• Marxist Writers: J.B.S. Haldane
• You can see and hear J.B.S. Haldane speak during the introduction of the rather disturbing Soviet film Experiments in the Revival of Organisms (1940)

There are photographs of Haldane at

• Photograph from 1946 Royal Society
• JBS Haldane, on the Portraits of Statisticians page.

The biography on the Marxist Writers page has a photograph of Haldane when younger.

• My Friend Mr. Leakey - text - Haldane's most amusing imaginary acquaintance

Topics in population genetics
Key concepts: Hardy-Weinberg law | genetic linkage | linkage disequilibrium | Fisher's fundamental theorem | neutral theory
Selection: natural | sexual | artificial | ecological
Effects of selection on genomic variation: genetic hitchhiking | background selection
Genetic drift: small population size | population bottleneck | founder effect | coalescence
Founders: R.A. Fisher | J. B. S. Haldane | Sewall Wright
Related topics: evolution | microevolution | evolutionary game theory | fitness landscape | genetic genealogy
List of evolutionary biology topics

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