Collection JBSH - John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

Extent: 1 box, 3 folders

3 holograph manuscripts by John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

Admin History: John Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS (5 November 1892 – 1 December 1964 was a British-Indian scientist who worked in physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. He was one of the founders of neo-Darwinism. He taught biology at the University of Cambridge, the Royal Institution, and University College London. Renouncing his British citizenship, he became an Indian citizen in 1961 and worked at the Indian Statistical Institute for the rest of his life. Haldane's article on abiogenesis in 1929 introduced the "primordial soup theory", which became the foundation for the concept of the chemical origin of life. He established human gene maps for haemophilia and colour blindness on the X chromosome, and codified Haldane's rule on sterility in the heterogametic sex of hybrids in species. He correctly proposed that sickle-cell disease confers some immunity to malaria. He was the first to suggest the central idea of in vitro fertilisation, as well as concepts such as hydrogen economy, cis and trans-acting regulation, coupling reaction, molecular repulsion, the darwin (as a unit of evolution), and organismal cloning. Haldane worked at the John Innes Horticultural Institution at Merton Park in Surrey from 1927 to 1937. When Alfred Daniel Hall became the director in 1926, one of his earliest tasks was to appoint as assistant director "a man of high quality in the study of genetics" who could become his successor. Recommended by Julian Huxley, the council appointed Haldane in March 1927, with the terms: "Mr. Haldane to visit the Institution fortnightly for a day and a night during the Cambridge terms, to put in two months also at Easter and long vacations in two continuous blocks and to be free in the Christmas vacation." He was officer in charge of Genetical Investigations. He became the Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution from 1930 to 1932 and in 1933, he became Professor of Genetics at University College London, where he spent most of his academic career. As Hall did not retire until 1939, Haldane had to resign from the John Innes in 1936 to become the first Weldon Professor of Biometry at University College London. Haldane's service was recorded to have helped the John Innes as "the liveliest place for research in genetics in Britain". At the height of World War II, he moved his team to the Rothamsted Experimental Station in Hertfordshire during 1941 to 1944 to escape bombings. Reginald Punnett, founder of the Journal of Genetics in 1910 with William Bateson, invited him to become editor in 1933, a post he retained until his death.