Doctoral Dissertation Research: Robert Spencer Jennings, Tracy M. Sonneborn, and the Career of American Protozoan Genetics

美国原生动物遗传学计划的创始人赫伯特·斯宾塞·詹宁斯和特蕾西·M·桑尼伯恩是20世纪生物界备受尊敬的领袖。然而，他们创建的研究计划和他们的主要研究有机体--草履虫，并没有对本世纪遗传思想的主体产生重大影响。朱迪思·施洛格尔女士的论文是在丘吉尔教授的指导下撰写的，目的是阐明这些研究人员的成功与他们的实验计划之间存在矛盾差距的背景。这项研究为詹宁斯、桑尼伯恩和单细胞生物草履虫的三重传记奠定了基础。考察詹宁斯和桑尼伯恩坚定的反简化论的实验研究模式，以及他们所接受的社会和政治承诺，将有助于阐明草履虫在基因研究方面的职业生涯。它还将使原生动物研究计划与其他相关的有机体计划进行比较。广泛的档案研究将阐明学生与教师之间、相互竞争的研究项目之间、研究人员与遗传有机体之间、实验探究模式以及有机体产生的知识类型之间的各种关系的重要作用。辨别这些关系将有助于更丰富地理解20世纪美国基因知识的发展。

The founders of the American protozoan genetics program, Herbert Spencer Jennings and Tracy M. Sonneborn, were highly respected leaders in the twentieth-century biological community. The research program they created and their primary research organism, Paramecium aurelia, however, have not impacted significantly the corpus of this century's genetic thought. The goal of Ms. Judith Schloegel's dissertation which is being written under the direction of Professor Churchill is to illuminate the circumstances underlying this paradoxical disparity between the success of these researchers and their experimental program. This research serves as the basis for a triple biography of Jennings, Sonneborn, and the unicellular organism, the Paramecium. Examination of the staunchly anti-reductionist mode of experimental inquiry of Jennings and Sonneborn, and the social and political commitments which they embraced, will illuminate the career of Paramecium in genetic research. It will also enable comparison of the protozoan research program with other relevant organismic programs. Extensive archival research will elucidate the important role of numerous relationships, between student and teacher, between competing research programs, and between researcher and genetic organism, for the mode of experimental inquiry practiced, and the type of knowledge produced by an organism. Discerning these relationships will contribute to a richer understanding of the development of genetic knowledge in twentieth-century America.