Book Review

Abstract

In Pursuit of the Gene: From Darwin to DNA (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), xiii + 370 pp., illus., $29.95, $17.95 paper.In Pursuit of the Gene is in many ways an unabashedly old-fashioned book about the history of science. It is a chronological narrative of the important advances in genetics, as selected by author James Schwartz, during the years between when Darwin proposed the theory of pangenesis in the late 1860s and the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953. Schwartz depicts the men who contributed to the development of genetics as flawed and sometimes troubled individuals, but their ideas and experiments are mostly presented as orderly stepping stones of scientific progress.After briefly introducing Darwin and pangenesis, Schwartz begins his tale in earnest with several chapters on Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton. He examines Galton's contributions to statistics, biometry, and eugenics, and he also explores Galton's relationship with his famous cousin and his intellectual influence on Karl Pearson and other younger scientists. Although these chapters cover familiar historical ground, Schwartz includes some interesting and less commonly discussed details such as Galton's efforts to collaborate with Darwin on a research program to study the existence of gemmules (Darwin's hypothetical hereditary-information-carrying particles) in the blood through blood transfusion experiments on rabbits.Schwartz next devotes a chapter to Mendel before focusing for several chapters on the biometrician-Mendelian debates of the turn of the twentieth century. He charts the many acrimonious exchanges between the scientists on both sides, including a detailed blow-by-blow of the well-known exchanges between William Bateson and W. F. R. (Rafael) Weldon over whether large-scale mutations (saltations) or small-scale continuous variations are the basis for evolution. In doing so, Schwartz makes excellent use of a wide array of primary documents, especially letters, to paint a vivid picture of the life of the mind of these scientists.The level of detail included in In Pursuit of the Gene, however, both with regard to the epistolary exchanges between scientists and with