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October 1, 1984

Arien Mack, Editor 


Table of Contents


Arien Mack

Editor’s Note



Victor Weisskopf

Niels Bohr, the Quantum, and the World

This article examines the career of Danish physicist Niels Bohr (1885-1962) and prints his 9 June, 1950 open letter to the UN pleading for free international exchange of information on nuclear technology.


Donald Fleming

Walter B. Cannon and Homeostasis



William Hayes

Max Delbruck and the Birth of Molecular Biology

Explores the connection between German-born physicist and biologist Max Delbrück's work on bacteriophages in the 1930s-1940s, and the discovery in the 1950s of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), along with the consequent growth of molecular genetics as a scientific field of study.


Bernard Feld

Leo Szilard, Scientist for All Seasons



Judith Goodstein

Atoms, Molecules, and Linus Pauling

This article examines discoveries about the nature of chemical bonding and protein structure made by American chemist and biologist Linus Pauling, whose mathematical and physical approach largely shaped 20th-century chemistry and biology.


Garland E. Allen


This article focuses on geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan's contributions to mechanistic biology, a late-19th-century trend that insisted on experimental proof of scientific theories; Morgan studied the small fruit fly, "Drosophila," to determine sex-linked hereditary traits, which led to the discovery of the relation between traits and specific genes located at identifiable sites on chromosomes.


Mott T. Greene

Alfred Wegener

Describes the life and career of German earth scientist Alfred Wegener and discusses the origins, content, and fate of his theory of continental drift, which made him notorious among geologists in the 1920's, only to be forgotten until the 1960's, when the rise of plate tectonics lent it credence.


Elof Axel Carlson


Focuses on early 20th-century contributions to classical and molecular genetics and the later campaigns for American and Soviet eugenics programs of American geneticist Hermann Joseph Muller.


Ralph Jewell

The Meteorological Judgment of Vilhelm Bjerknes



Ernst Peter Fischer





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