Designs for Life Molecular Biology after World War II [Hardcover]

An important study on the making of molecular biology and its cultural contexts.Molecular biology dominates our perceptions of life, health and disease. In the postwar years, the Medical Research Council Laboratory at Cambridge was a world-renowned center of this emerging discipline; this important new study examines the development of the new science of life in the context of this remarkable institution.Molecular biology dominates our perceptions of life, health and disease. In the postwar years, the Medical Research Council Laboratory at Cambridge was a world-renowned center of this emerging discipline; this important new study examines the development of the new science of life in the context of this remarkable institution.Molecular biology has come to dominate our perceptions of life, health and disease. In the decades following World War II, the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge was a world-renowned center of this emerging discipline. Crick and Watson, among others, did the work that made them famous in this laboratory. Soraya de Chadarevian's important new study is the first to examine the creation and expansion of molecular biology and its place on the postwar governmental agenda through the prism of this remarkable institution.Introduction; Part I. Postwar Reconstruction and Biophysics: 1. World War II and the mobilisation of British scientists; 2. Reconstructing life; 3. Proteins, crystals and computers; 4. Televisual language; Part II. Building Molecular Biology: 5. Locating the double helix; 6. Disciplinary moves; 7. The origins of molecular biology revisited; Part III. Bench Work and Politics: 8. Laboratory cultures; 9. On the governmental agenda; 10. The end of an era; Conclusions. I enjoyed this book tremendously, and would highly recommend Design for Life to any reader with an interest in the history of the sciences. Laurette Geldenhuys, Dalhousie University, in The Canadian Bulletin of Medical History The book lCI