J. B. S. Haldane

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John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892 – 1964), British geneticist, one of the founders (along with Fisher and Wright) of population genetics.

His famous book, The Causes of Evolution (1932), was the first major work of what came to be known as the Modern Synthesis, reestablishing natural selection as the premier mechanism of evolution by explaining it in terms of the mathematical consequences of Mendelian genetics.

Haldane was also a great science popularizer, and was sort of the Stephen Jay Gould or Richard Dawkins of his day. His essay, Daedalus or Science and the Future (1923) was remarkable in predicting many scientific advances but has been criticized for presenting a too idealistic view of scientific progress.

He himself was a very idealistic man, and in his youth was a devoted Communist and author of many articles in The Daily Worker. Events in the Soviet Union, such as the rise of the anti-Mendelian agronomist Trofim Lysenko and the crimes of Stalin, caused him to break with the Party later in life.

Haldane was friends with the author Aldous Huxley, and was the basis for the biologist Shearwater in Huxley's novel Antic Hay.

He had many students, the most famous of whom, John Maynard Smith, is perhaps also the one most like himself.

In one of the last speeches of his life, Biological Possibilities for the Human Species of the Next Ten-Thousand Years (1963), Haldane coined the word "clone", from the Greek word for twig.

Haldane was a very quotable man. Some of the things he said are probably more famous than he is:

1. The Creator, if He exists, has a special preference for beetles.. This is referring to the fact that 25% of all known animal species are types of beetles.

2. Four stages of acceptance: i) this is worthless nonsense; ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view; iii) this is true, but quite unimportant; iv) I always said so. This is referring to the stages that a scientific theory goes through.

3. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we CAN suppose. Often referred to as "Haldane's Law", this is an explanation for the increasing counterintuitiveness of modern scientific theories.

4. Would I lay down my life to save my brother? No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins. This is a joke based on the idea of inclusive fitness. Basically, the joke is as you only share 50% of your genes with a brother, and 12.5% with a cousin, you would have to save enough relatives to at least break even.

Links:

1. An online copy of Daedalus or Science and the Future http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/Daedalus.html

2. A review (from a modern perspective) of The Causes of Evolution http://www.santafe.edu/~shalizi/reviews/causes-of-evolution/