The Public Biologist: The Life and Legacy of Geneticist Bentley Glass

这个为期两年的项目调查了遗传学家本特利·格拉斯(1906-2005)的生平和遗产，他是美国著名的教育家、行政人员和公民自由主义者。这个传记项目基于费城美国哲学学会以前未曾探索过的材料，使用档案历史的方法来探索冷战时期美国同时是公共知识分子和科学家意味着什么。学术价值格拉斯的公众和职业选择对历史学家对冷战科学家生活的理解提出了挑战。格拉斯在范围非常广泛的公共、私人和专业组织中担任领导职务，从马里兰州美国公民自由联盟到巴尔的摩学校委员会，再到美国科学促进会，再到生物科学课程研究。他在学术自由和民权问题上尤其直言不讳，当时政治声明更多地导致科学家在职业上被边缘化，但他的职业生涯却蒸蒸日上。因此，理解格拉斯的经历与战后科学的学术线索特别相关，这些学术线索涉及学术自由、种族、教育和科学权威。潜在的更广泛的影响格拉斯的一生和遗产与许多当代关于科学和社会之间正确关系的辩论具有相关性，包括专家在民主中的作用，基因测试的使用，以及学校的进化论教学。作为一名遗传学家“普通人”，格拉斯的职业生涯提供了一个视角，让我们可以看到制度结构的增长，这些结构仍然是当今科学的特征。鉴于他参与了科学、政治、民权和公民自由，对他的生平的研究提供了将冷战科学史与战后美国政治、社会和文化史的更广泛故事联系起来的可能性。

IntroductionThis two-year project investigates the life and legacy of geneticist Bentley Glass (1906-2005), a prominent American educator, administrator, and civil libertarian. Based on previously unexplored materials at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, this biographical project uses the methods of archival history to explore what it meant to be simultaneously a public intellectual and a scientist in Cold War America. Intellectual MeritGlass's public and professional choices present a challenge of historians' understandings of the life of a Cold War scientist. Glass held leadership roles in an extraordinarily wide range of public, private, and professional organizations, from the Maryland American Civil Liberties Union, to the Baltimore Board of School Commissioners, to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study. He was particularly outspoken on academic freedom and civil rights during a time when political statements more typically resulted in scientists' professional marginalization, yet his career thrived. An understanding of Glass's experiences is therefore particularly relevant to the strands of scholarship on postwar science that deal with academic freedom, race, education, and scientific authority. Potential Broader ImpactGlass's life and legacy hold relevance for many contemporary debates about the proper relationship between science and society, including the role of experts in a democracy, the uses of genetic testing, and the teaching of evolution in the schools. As a sort of geneticist "everyman," Glass's career provides a lens into the growth of institutional structures that continue to characterize science today. Given his involvement in science, politics, civil rights, and civil liberties, a study of his life offers the potential to connect the history of Cold War science with the broader story of American political, social, and cultural history in the postwar period.