Popularizing Science – the Life and Work of JBS Haldane

Along with his older Eton contemporary, Sir Julian Huxley, JBS (Jack) Haldane (1892-1964) was one of the great 20th-century popularisers of science. This engaging and highly readable biography is the first for nearly 50 years and has been written by one of his last pupils from the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta, who is now President of the Foundation for Genetic Research in Houston. JBS was a larger-than-life character, brilliant, eccentric, original and forthright. His father was the almost equally famous JS Haldane of Oxford, who involved his son in – sometimes dangerous - experiments from an early age. His sister was the novelist Lady Naomi Mitchison. Jack gained the top scholarship to Eton and duly became the Captain of the School like such other luminaries as Viscount Hailsham and AJ Ayer. It is rumoured that he was meant to sit the classical scholarship for Oxford but found himself in front of a mathematical paper, and got a scholarship in that instead. He read mathematics and biology in his first year, then switched to Greats in which he naturally gained a First (Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson was another famous biologist who was also President of the Classical Society). This meant that he did not actually have a scientific degree, but went on to occupy many distinguished university positions. As the book outlines, Haldane made significant contributions to genetics, physiology, biochemistry, biometry, cosmology and other sciences.

Following in his father's footsteps, Haldane conducted a number of dangerous experiments using himself as the guinea pig, including with poisonous gases. His personal life is also colourfully described and the important role of his two wives Charlotte Franken and Helen Spurway, not without its own controversies – Haldane was disciplined by the university for adultery. In the course of his long career, he associated with many other distinguished scientists, and a strength of this book is outlining their own lives and contributions as well as their relationship with Haldane. These included Joseph Needham, Sir Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, Norbert Wiener, Sir Peter Medawar, Jacques Monod and Ernst Mayr. His career as a populariser took off with the publication in 1923 of his book Daedalus, or Science and the Future. This contained a number of prescient ideas, particularly in genetics. Like Einstein, Haldane was concerned with the ethical dimension of science, and foresaw challenges if ethical progress did not keep pace with scientific and technological advance. During the 1930s, Haldane became a Marxist, and the author shows how this skewed his approach to the Lysenko controversy. He spent the last few years of his life in India, and became sympathetic to Hinduism while remaining fundamentally agnostic. The reader comes to appreciate another dimension of his talent in examples of doggerel verse, including a scurrilous reflection on his cancer. As he was dying and thinking about his life, he was able to say "it was a good show!" You can say that again, and I would strongly recommend reading this fascinating account of the life and work of a remarkably brilliant and creative individual. One small cavil: more careful editing would have eliminated various repetitions in the text, but this does little to detract from the overall quality of this biography.