The Place of Genetics in Modern Biology' 



By George W. Beadle 



President, The University of Chicago 



[With 1 plate] 



Many years ago Dr. William Morton Wlieeler, a distinguished and 

 admired professor of biology and Dean of the Bussey Institution of 

 Harvard University, wrote a small essay ^ in which he said, "Natural 

 history constitutes the perennial rootstock or stolon of biologic sci- 

 ence. . . . From time to time the stolon has produced special dis- 

 ciplines which have grown into great flourishing complexes. . . . More 

 recently another dear little bud, genetics, has come off, so promising, so 

 self-conscious, but alas, so constricted at the base." I am sure Profes- 

 sor Wlieeler was convinced that this bud would be abortive. 



More recently there appeared in Science ^ a related essay by a dis- 

 tinguished and likewise much admired biologist, Sewall Wright, wdio 

 was a graduate student at the Bussey Institution during Wheeler's 

 time. After quoting the above words, Wright points out that, far 

 from aborting, the little bud genetics has flourished mightily and has 

 in many respects replaced natural history in the sense that it has be- 

 come the rootstock of all biological science and has bound "the whole 

 field of biology into a unified discipline that may yet rival the physical 

 sciences." 



Why such a change in 36 years ? For despite the fact that Wheeler 

 was not above giving his friends and colleagues in genetics a bit of 

 ragging, he was basically serious. There has been a great change. 

 We have come to recognize that genetics does in fact deal with the 

 very essence of life. This is why at the present time in the biology 

 laboratories of M.I.T. there are physical chemists, biophysicists, bio- 

 chemists, microbiologists, virologists, zoologists, and other varieties 

 of biologists devoting much effort to the study of genetic material. 



1 should like to begin a development of this thesis that genetics is 

 the keystone of modern biology by reminding you that every one of 

 us — you and I — starts development as a tiny sphere of protoplasm, 



^ Eleventh Annual Arthur Dehon Little Memorial Lecture. Reprinted, with additions 

 and modifications, by permission of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 



2 Science, vol. 57, p. 61, 1923. 



3 Science, vol. 130, p. 959, 1959. 



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