The Rockefeller Foundation and the rise of molecular biology

Abstract

The Rockefeller Foundation began to support a systematic transfer of physico-chemical technology to experimental biology in the early 1930s. A close look at three key projects in the United Kingdom shows the impact and limits of private philanthropy on scientific innovation.

The Market Model and the Growth and Decline of Academic Fields in U.S. Four‐Year Colleges and Universities, 1980–20001

“…Although discoveries are much more likely to create new research areas and subfields than entirely new fields (Abbott, 2001; Frickel and Gross, 2005; Gibbons et al, 1994), in rare cases, whole disciplines may be reconstituted along substantively different lines in order better to accord with opportunities for discovery. Such reorganization occurred in the life sciences in the 1980s, as phyla‐based forms of classifying knowledge gave way to reorganization based on strategic sites for understanding processes of organic development and evolution—as well as to the application of engineering technology to these biological processes (Abir‐Am, 2002; Jong, 2008; Judson, 1979). 9 CCS data showed declines in the functional and phyla‐based fields of entomology (−17%; 24 to 20 departmental fields); animal science (−17%; 29 to 24 departmental fields); anatomy (−27%; 88 to 64 departmental fields), botany (−52%; 27 to 13 departmental fields), and zoology (−63%; 24 to 9 departmental fields), together with growth in the life process fields of genetics (20%; 5 to 6 departmental fields), biochemistry (40%; 40 to 56 departmental fields), environmental science and ecology (119%; 27 to 59 departmental fields), and molecular and cell biology (175%; 8 to 22 departmental fields).…”

“…9 9 Intellectual revolutions are rarely, if ever, driven solely by the logic of the internal development of scientific understanding. In the case of the biological sciences, the Rockefeller Foundation played an important role in the institutionalization of molecular biology, in part due to its long‐term strategic planning with scientists (Abir‐Amin, 2002). New forms of organization were also well supported by businesses, such as biotechnology and bioengineering firms, which expected to profit from new breakthroughs (see, e.g., Kay, 1993; Powell et al, 2005).…”

The Rockefeller Foundation and the Post-WW2 Transnational Ecology of Science Policy: from Solitary Splendor in the Inter-war Era to a ‘Me Too’ Agenda in the 1950s

“…Though the Foundation commissioned and received detailed advice from leading DNA scientists such as E. Chargaff of Columbia, and A. R. Todd of Cambridge University, among others, in the period between 1950 and 1952; the Foundation neither processed that advice, nor did it play a significant role in the biological revolution around DNA. The Rockefeller Foundation's field officer in Europe, Gerald Pomerat, happened to visit the Cavendish Laboratory a day before the DNA structure paper was sent for publication, yet he could not understand how that structure had been discovered in a laboratory that the Foundation sponsored to do protein research (Abir‐Am, 2002).…”

Foundations and philanthropic organizations in the development of new science and technology: the case of micro-and nanotechnology in Mexico

“…3 Cueto, 1997;Harwood, 2009;Fitzgerald, 1994, Faria andda Costa, 2006;Solórzano, 1994), in Africa (Shrum, 2000;Toenniessen et al, 2008), in Asia (Brown, 1980) and in Europe (Stapleton, 2003;Buxton, 2003: Guilhot, 2007. Within this literature, the place occupied by philanthropic organizations in scientific and technological development shows them to be important actors in the periods during the First and Second World Wars, as well as during the Cold War (Abir-Am, 2002). The activities of philanthropic organizations are carried out at different levels and in various dimensions.…”

“…In some cases, their presence has given rise to the creation of new fields, with one of the more remarkable cases being the development of the 'green revolution' and its emergence in peripheral countries (Losego and Arvanitis, 2008), where the Rockefeller Foundation has been a significant player in the implementation of these technologies. Another interesting case involving the same foundation is the emergence and development of molecular biology (Abir-Am, 2002). In some of the studies that we have reviewed, the fields where philanthropic foundations intervene are seen to have great potential and where the knowledge produced shows a high degree of discipline.…”