Designs for Life
Molecular Biology after World War II

An important study on the making of molecular biology and its cultural contexts.

Soraya de Chadarevian (Author)

9780521570787, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 May 2002

444 pages
24.4 x 17 x 2.5 cm, 1.16 kg

Review of the hardback: '… Designs for Life is a very useful addition to the history of molecular biology.' Ambix

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 centre of this emerging discipline. It was here that Crick and Watson, Kendrew and Perutz, Sanger and Brenner pursued their celebrated investigations. Soraya de Chadarevian's important study was the first to examine the creation and expansion of molecular biology through the prism of this remarkable institution. Firmly placing the history of the laboratory in its broader institutional and scientific context, she shows how molecular biology was built at the lab bench and through the wide circulation of tools, models and researchers, as well as in governmental committees, international exhibitions and television studios. Designs for Life is a major contribution both to the history of molecular biology, and to the history of science and technology in post-war Britain.

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.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX]