Laboratory Practice and Disciplinary Transformation in Postwar California

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Dr. Creager is examining the development of biochemistry and molecular biology as culturally authoritative and institutionally powerful disciplines after World War II. Her focus is on the scientific and rhetorical uses of tobacco mosaic virus, a plant virus studied in laboratories of biochemist Wendell Stanley, who received the 1946 Nobel Prize for its crystallization. The major part of this study concerns the changes in scientific research and disciplinary power which occurred in the postwar period. Stanley's laboratory and departments in Berkeley serve as a case study in the institutional building of biochemistry and molecular biology after the war. Her analysis focuses on the uses of viruses as key medical and agricultural agents in gaining public support for molecular virology as well as on attempts to center disciplines of biochemistry and molecular biology around viruses as laboratory materials. This project aims to integrate historical developments in molecular biology and biochemistry with other cultural and political changes in twentieth-century America.