The Coming of Age of American Biology

实际上，无论以何种标准衡量，美国都是生物学领域的世界领导者。它是如何取得这种卓越成就的，是迈恩沙因博士研究的一个重要方面。从1880年到1915年，美国的生命科学工作经历了一个重要的成熟过程，变得自觉地现代化、富有成效、明确地生物化，在某些方面也具有独特的美国特色。埃德蒙·比彻·威尔逊、埃德温·格兰特·康克林、托马斯·亨特·摩根和罗斯·格兰维尔·哈里森四个人在建立强大而成功的研究项目方面发挥了核心作用，这些项目吸引了国际关注和研究生的兴趣。这四个人都成为了建立主要生物学会、期刊和研究基金的领导者。从他们在约翰·霍普金斯大学读研究生开始，他们就试图雇佣彼此，并保持着密切的联系。然而，他们在发育生物学上产生了不同的项目：威尔逊在哥伦比亚大学从事细胞学研究，康克林在普林斯顿大学从事实验进化研究，摩根在哥伦比亚大学从事遗传学研究，哈里森在耶鲁大学从事实验胚胎学研究。迈恩沙因博士关注的是这四个人和他们不断变化的研究项目，从而也审视了在美国生物学崛起为卓越的关键时刻，科学变革的过程。

The United States, by virtually any measure, is the world leader in biology. How it achieved this preeminence is a significant aspect of Dr. Maienschein's study. During the period from 1880 to 1915, work in the life sciences in the United States underwent a significant maturing process, becoming self-consciously modern, productive and explicitly biological as well as uniquely American in some respects. Four individuals, Edmund Beecher Wilson, Edwin Grant Conklin, Thomas Hunt Morgan, and Ross Granville Harrison, played central roles in establishing strong and successful research programs which attracted international attention and graduate student interest. Each of the four became a leader in establishing major biological societies, journals, and research funding foundations. They tried to hire each other and retained strong ties beginning with their graduate student days at Johns Hopkins. Yet they generated divergent programs in developmental biology: Wilson in cytology at Columbia, Conklin in experimental evolution in Princeton, Morgan in genetics at Columbia, and Harrison in experimental embryology at Yale. Dr. Maienschein is focusing on those four individuals and on their changing research programs, thereby also examining the process of scientific change at this critical time in the rise to preeminence of American biology.