Compiled via the efforts and contributions of Many....
Transcribed and presented to the web....
Introduction: I found the following via the
outstanding internet resource, Wikipedia. There was enough material on the following family
to encourage me to simply establish a link to the data. That would have been easier, but
I am familar enough with the resource and others on line, as well, to know that what is available to
access today, may not be so on the morrow. So for the entertainment of my living relatives
and my descendants, I am providing the articles herewithin. I almost titled these pages, "Royalty,
Mariners, Preachers and Aethists" or "Science, the X-factor" or "Education teaches that it is okay to change
your mind" but as you may have noticed, I simply refer to it as "Jack" JBS Haldane... aka... the man who coined
the word, "clone", and who happened to have been an aethist and Great Grandson of an Evangalical
Preacher James Alexander Haldane as
well as son of the man who invented the gas
mask, John Scott
Haldane and brother to a prolific writer,
Naomi Haldane Mitchison who helped proof-read her friend's epic novel, Lord of the Rings. John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
(November 5, 1892 - December 1, 1964) was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, to
physiologist John Scott Haldane and Louisa Kathleen Haldane (née Trotter), and descended
from Scottish aristocrats (see Haldane family ). His younger
sister Naomi Mitchison became a writer. His uncle was Richard
Haldane, 1st Viscount Haldane , politician and one
time Secretary of State for War and his aunt was the author
Elizabeth Haldane . Known as "Jack," JBS Haldane was educated at Dragon School , then
at Eton (where he spent six years and suffered a certain amount of bullying at
first, but ended up being Captain of the School) and at New College, Oxford ,
where he graduated in 1911. In January 1915, JBS Haldane entered the First World
War in France, serving with the Black Watch in France and
Iraq . He was initially Bombing Officer for the 3rd Battalion before becoming
a Trench Mortar Officer in the 1st. He took to the task of Bombing Officer with such
enthusiasm that he was nicknamed Bombo. While in the army, he became a
socialist , writing "If I live to see an England in which socialism
has made the occupation of a grocer as honourable as that of a soldier, I shall die happy". He
completed his war service in January 1919. Between 1919 and 1922 JBS was a
Fellow of New College, Oxford , then moved to Cambridge
University , where he accepted a Readership in Biochemistry at Trinity
College and taught there until 1932. During his nine years at
Cambridge, Haldane worked on enzymes and genetics, particularly the mathematical side of
genetics. During the teens and twenties, Haldane wrote many popular essays on science
that were eventually collected and published in 1927 in a volume entitled Possible Worlds. JBS Haldane then accepted a position as Professor of
Genetics and moved to 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. In the late 1950s he moved to
India at the invitation of P.C. Mahalanobis . The
move was ostensibly a protest against the Suez War , but had been a possibility for
some while; he was in any case facing retirement from UCL. He became an Indian citizen. In 1923 in a talk given in Cambridge, JBS Haldane,
foreseeing the exhaustion of coal for power generation in Britain, proposed a network of
hydrogen-generating windmills. This is the first proposal of the hydrogen-based renewable
energy economy [citation needed ] . In 1924 Haldane met Charlotte Burghes (nee Franken) , a
young reporter for the Daily Express, and the two later married. To do so Charlotte divorced
her husband Jack Burghes, causing some controversy. Haldane was almost dismissed from
Cambridge for the way he handled his meeting with her, which led to the divorce. In 1925, GE Briggs and JBS Haldane derived a new
interpretation of the enzyme kinetics law described by Victor Henri in 1903, different
from the 1913 Michaelis-Menten equation . Leonor
Michaelis and Maud Menten assumed that enzyme (catalyst) and substrate (reactant) are in fast
equilibrium with their complex, which then dissociates to yield product and free enzyme. The
Briggs-Haldane equation was of the same algebraic form, but their derivation is based on the quasi
steady state approximation, that is the concentration(s) of intermediate
complex(es) do(es) not change. As a result, the microscopic meaning of the
"Michaelis Constant" (km) is different. Although commonly referring it as
Michaelis-Menten kinetics , most of the current models actually
use the Briggs-Haldane derivation. JBS Haldane made many contributions to human
genetics and was one of the three major figures to develop the mathematical
theory of population genetics . He is usually regarded as the
third of these in importance, after R. A. Fisher and Sewall
Wright . His greatest contribution was in a series of ten papers
on "A Mathematical Theory of Natural and Artificial
Selection " which was the major
series of papers on the mathematical theory of natural selection . It
treated many major cases for the first time, showing the direction and rates of changes of gene
frequencies . It also pioneered in investigating the interaction
of natural selection with mutation and with migration. JBS Haldane's book,
The Causes of Evolution (1932), summarized these results, especially in
its extensive appendix. This body of work was a component of what came to be known as the
"modern evolutionary synthesis ", reestablishing natural
selection as the premier mechanism of evolution by
explaining it in terms of the mathematical consequences of Mendelian
genetics . JBS Haldane introduced many quantitative approaches in
biology such as in his essay On
Being the Right Size . His contributions to theoretical population genetics and
statistical human genetics included the first methods using maximum likelihood for
estimation of human linkage maps , and pioneering methods for estimating human
mutation rates. His was the first to calculate the mutational load caused
by recurring mutations at a gene locus, and to introduce the idea of a "cost of natural selection". JBS Haldane was a keen experimenter, willing to expose
himself to danger to obtain data. One experiment involving 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." He was also a famous science populariser like
Isaac Asimov , Stephen Jay Gould , or Richard
Dawkins . 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. JBS Haldane was very idealistic, and in his youth
was a devoted Communist and author of many articles in The Daily Worker and
was the chairman of the editorial board of the London edition for several years. In 1937,
Haldane had become a Marxist, and an open supporter of the Communist Party, but not yet a member of
the Party. He would join the Party in 1942. Events in the Soviet Union, such
as the rise of the anti-Mendelian agronomist Trofim Lysenko and the crimes of
Stalin, may have caused him to break with the Communist Party later in life, although known records
show his partial support of Lysenko and Stalin rather than criticism or condemnation. [1] He
left the Communist party in 1950, shortly after having toyed with standing for Parliament as a
Communist Party candidate. However, his support for the Socialist ideal appears to be a
pragmatic one. Writing in 1928, in
On Being the Right Size ,
JBS Haldane doubts whether the Socialist principle could be operated on the scale of the British Empire or
the United States (or, implicitly, the Soviet Union): "while nationalization of certain industries is
an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized
British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping
a hedge." As late as 1962, he would describe Joseph Stalin as "a very great man who did a
very good job". He is also known for an observation from his
essay, On Being the Right Size, which Jane Jacobs and
others have since referred to as Haldane's principle. This is that sheer size very often
defines what bodily equipment an animal must have: "Insects, being so small, do not have oxygen-carrying
bloodstreams. What little oxygen their cells require can be absorbed by simple diffusion of
air through their bodies. But being larger means an animal must take on complicated oxygen
pumping and distributing systems to reach all the cells." The conceptual
metaphor to animal body complexity has been of use in energy
economics and secession ideas. JBS Haldane was a friend of the author Aldous
Huxley , and was the basis for the biologist Shearwater in Huxley's novel
Antic Hay . I deas from Haldane's Daedalus, such as
ectogenesis (the development of fetuses in artificial wombs), also influenced
Huxley's Brave New World . The most famous of JBS Haldane's many students, John
Maynard Smith , shared his mixture of political and scientific interests
to some extent, but broke away from the Communist Party in 1956. In 1952, JBS received the Darwin Medal from the
Royal Society. In 1956, he was awarded the Huxley Memorial Medal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute. Among other awards, he received the Feltrinelli Prize, an
Honorary Doctorate of Science, an Honorary Fellowship at New College, and the Kimber Award of the
U.S. National Academy of Sciences. JBS Haldane died on December 1 , 1964
. He willed that his body be used for study at the Rangaraya Medical College,
Kakinada. [2]“My body has been used for both purposes during my lifetime and after my
death, whether I continue to exist or not, I shall have no further use for it, and desire that it
shall be used by others. Its refrigeration, if this is possible, should be a first
charge on my estate...". Some of JBS Haldane's works are:
By Colleen Cahoon, of Texas
[Jack (JBS) Haldane's Family Tree]
Learn about Jack (JBS)'s Father, [ John Scott Haldane ], who invented the gas mask.
Learn about
Jack (JBS)'s sister, [ Naomi
Margaret Haldane ], a prolific writer,
who proof-read her friend's epic novel, Lord of the Rings.
Learn about
Jack (JBS)'s Great GrandFather,
[ James
Alexander Haldane ], who was an Evangalical Preacher.
Learn about [ Margaret Haldane, ]
my Great, Great, Great-Grandmother.