A Dominant Character
The Radical Science and Restless Politics of J. B. S. Haldane
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
One of the Wall Street Journal's 10 Best Books of 2020
One of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2020
A biography of J. B. S. Haldane, the brilliant and eccentric British scientist whose innovative predictions inspired Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
J. B. S. Haldane’s life was rich and strange, never short on genius or drama—from his boyhood apprenticeship to his scientist father, who first instilled in him a devotion to the scientific method; to his time in the trenches during the First World War, where he wrote his first scientific paper; to his numerous experiments on himself, including inhaling dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and drinking hydrochloric acid; to his clandestine research for the British Admiralty during the Second World War. He is best remembered as a geneticist who revolutionized our understanding of evolution, but his peers hailed him as a polymath. One student called him “the last man who might know all there was to be known.”
He foresaw in vitro fertilization, peak oil, and the hydrogen fuel cell, and his contributions ranged over physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, mathematics, and biostatistics. He was also a staunch Communist, which led him to Spain during the Civil War and sparked suspicions that he was spying for the Soviets. He wrote copiously on science and politics in newspapers and magazines, and he gave speeches in town halls and on the radio—all of which made him, in his day, as famous in Britain as Einstein. It is the duty of scientists to think politically, Haldane believed, and he sought not simply to tell his readers what to think but to show them how to think.
Beautifully written and richly detailed, Samanth Subramanian’s A Dominant Character recounts Haldane’s boisterous life and examines the questions he raised about the intersections of genetics and politics—questions that resonate even more urgently today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Subramanian (This Divided Island) explores the significant achievements and flaws of British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane (1892 1964) in this insightful biography. As the book shows, Haldane helped create the field of population genetics, which was central to bridging Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics. He was also a gifted popularizer, with a rare ability for explaining technical concepts to laypeople. However, his deep concerns about economic justice led to his public embrace of the Soviet regime, Subramanian writes, and ultimately to "conflict between his scientific integrity and his political fealty." This played out most clearly in Haldane's support for Trofim Lysenko, director of the Soviet Institute of Genetics, who was notorious for disputing virtually all accepted genetic principles and for purging the country of any scientist who disagreed with his positions. Subramanian skillfully explores the tensions and contradictions embodied by Haldane, a man who continued to work on behalf of the British government he regularly criticized, all the while under surveillance by the British intelligence service that suspected him of being a Soviet spy. This portrait of a brilliant, egotistical contrarian illustrates how science and politics can collide, a subject with ample relevance for the modern world.
