Marcello Siniscalco (standing) and Haldane in Andhra Pradesh, India, 1964
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1929
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John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was born in Oxford to John Scott Haldane, a physiologist, and Louisa Kathleen Haldane - an aristocratic and secular Scottish family.
His younger sister, Naomi, became a writer. His uncle was Richard Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane, politician and one time Secretary of State for War, his aunt was the author Elizabeth Haldane. His father was a scientist, a philosopher and a Liberal, and his mother was a Conservative.
He learnt to read at the age of three, and at four, after injuring his forehead he asked the doctor, "Is this oxyhaemoglobin or carboxyhaemoglobin?". Haldane took an interest in his father’s work very early in childhood. From age eight he worked with his father in their home laboratory where he experienced his first self-experimentation, the method he would later be famous for. He and his father became their own "human guinea pigs", such as in their investigation on the effects of poison gases. In 1899 his family moved to "Cherwell", a late Victorian house at the outskirts of Oxford with its own private laboratory.
His formal education began in 1897 at Oxford Preparatory School (now Dragon School), where he gained a First Scholarship in 1904 to Eton. He studied mathematics and classics at New College at the University of Oxford and obtained first-class honours in mathematical moderations in 1912 and first-class honours in Greats in 1914.
He became engrossed in genetics and presented a paper on gene linkage in vertebrates in the summer of 1912. His first technical paper, a 30-page long article on haemoglobin function, was published that same year, as a co-author alongside his father.
His education was interrupted by the First World War during which he fought in the British Army, being commissioned a temporary second lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion of the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) on 15 August 1914. He was promoted to temporary lieutenant on 18 February 1915 and to temporary captain on 18 October. He served in France and Iraq, where he was wounded. He relinquished his commission on 1 April 1920, retaining his rank of captain. For his ferocity and aggressiveness in battles, his commander called him the "bravest and dirtiest officer in my Army."
Between 1919 and 1922 he was a Fellow of New College, Oxford, where he researched physiology and genetics. He then moved to the University of Cambridge, where he accepted a readership in Biochemistry and taught until 1932. From 1927 until 1937 he was also Head of Genetical Research at the John Innes Horticultural Institution. During his nine years at Cambridge, Haldane worked on enzymes and genetics, particularly the mathematical side of genetics. He was the Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution from 1930 to 1932 and in 1933 he became full Professor of Genetics at University College London, where he spent most of his academic career. Four years later he became the first Weldon Professor of Biometry at University College London.
Haldane, inspired by his father, would expose himself to danger to obtain data. To test the effects of acidification of the blood he drank dilute hydrochloric acid, enclosed himself in an airtight room containing 7% carbon dioxide, and found that it 'gives one a rather violent headache'. One experiment to study elevated levels of oxygen saturation triggered a fit which resulted in him suffering crushed vertebrae. In his decompression chamber experiments, he and his volunteers suffered perforated eardrums. But, as Haldane stated in What is Life, "the drum generally heals up; and if a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment."
In 1956, Haldane left University College London, and joined the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Kolkata, India, where he headed the biometry unit. He believed that the warm climate would do him good, and that India shared his socialist dreams.
He was keenly interested in inexpensive research. He wrote to Julian Huxley about his observations on Vanellus malabaricus, the yellow-wattled Lapwing. He advocated the use of Vigna sinensis (cowpea) as a model for studying plant genetics. He took an interest in the pollination of Lantana camara. He lamented that Indian universities forced those who took up biology to drop mathematics. Haldane took an interest in the study of floral symmetry.
In January 1961 he befriended Gary Botting, 1960 U.S. Science Fair winner in zoology, inviting him to share the results of his experiments hybridising Antheraea silk moths. J.B.S., his wife Helen Spurway, and Krishna Dronamraju were present at the Oberoi Grand Hotel in Kolkata when Brown reminded the Haldanes that she and Botting had a previously scheduled event that would prevent them from accepting an invitation to a banquet proposed by J.B.S. and Helen in their honour and had regretfully declined the honour. After the two students had left the hotel, Haldane went on his much-publicized hunger strike to protest what he regarded as a "U.S. insult."When the director of the ISI, P. C. Mahalanobis, confronted Haldane about both the hunger strike and the unbudgeted banquet, Haldane resigned from his post (in February 1961), and moved to a newly established biometry unit in Odisha.
Haldane died on 1 December 1964 in Bhubaneswar. He willed that his body be used for study at the Rangaraya Medical College, Kakinada.
He is widely known for his work on enzymes, genetics, and heredity, and particularly for having established statistically the rate at which mutations occur and the rate at which they return to the more normal conditions.
During World War The second, Haldane made notable contributions to scientific developments, particularly in the field of physical endurance.
Haldane became a socialist during the First World War, supported the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War and then became an open supporter of the Communist Party in 1937, being a pragmatic and dialectical materialist Marxist, writing many articles for the Daily Worker.
In 1938, he proclaimed enthusiastically that "I think that Marxism is true." He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1942. He was pressed to speak out about the rise of Lysenkoism and the persecution of geneticists in the Soviet Union as anti-Darwinist and the denouncement of genetics as incompatible with dialectical materialism. He shifted the focus to the United Kingdom and a criticism of the dependence of scientific research on financial patronage.
By the end of the Second World War Haldane had become an explicit critic of the regime. He left the party in 1950, shortly after considering standing for Parliament as a Communist Party candidate. He continued to admire Joseph Stalin, describing him in 1962 as "a very great man who did a very good job".
Quotations:
My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.
Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public.
I had gastritis for about fifteen years until I read Lenin and other writers, who showed me what was wrong with our society and how to cure it. Since then I have needed no magnesia.
I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages: 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.
Three hundred and ten species in all of India, representing two hundred and thirty-eight genera, sixty-two families, nineteen different orders. All of them on the Ark. And this is only India, and only the birds.
Haldane took Indian citizenship (1961), he was interested in Hinduism and became a vegetarian.
In 1924, Haldane met Charlotte Franken. So that they could marry, Charlotte divorced her husband, Jack Burghes, causing some controversy. Haldane was almost dismissed from Cambridge for the way he handled his meeting with her. They married in 1926. Following their separation in 1942, the Haldanes divorced in 1945. He later married Helen Spurway.
Helen Spurway (Helen Haldane) (c. 1917 – 15 February 1978) was a biologist and the second wife of J. B. S. Haldane. She emigrated to India in 1957 along with Haldane and conducted research in field biology along with Krishna Dronamraju, Suresh Jayakar, and others.
lizabeth Sanderson Haldane (27 May 1862 – 24 December 1937) was an author, biographer, philosopher, suffragist, nursing administrator, and social welfare worker.
She was the sister of Richard Burdon Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane and John Scott Haldane, and became the first female Justice of the Peace in Scotland in 1920.
She was made a Companion of Honour in 1918.
