Stuff in History of Biology

[hypatiasghost]

Ed met and married Pamela Harrah, a Stanford graduate, in 1946. Their meeting was arranged by George W. Beadle, who had returned to Caltech from Stanford in 1946 to chair the biology division. That same year Ed had taken responsibility for supervising the extensive Caltech Drosophila Stock Center and was looking for a stock keeper. While still at

Comments

[flewellyn]

I tried to find it myself. Just as well you found it first, I don't know all the best places to look for biology stuff.

I'm glad he credited her. A shame that doing so is praiseworthy, and not simply expected.

[hypatiasghost]

Well, maybe it is/was expected -- I don't know! The Polycomb gene was a pretty big deal, and is becoming even more of a big deal (apparently) as we learn about epigenetics -- it's apparently highly involved in regulating the structure of DNA to shut down certain stretches of code. It might not be common to credit your tech with the discovery of just any random gene, but one that important, maybe it is common.

And it might not be all that strange that I've never heard of her; I'm hardly an expert on 40s and 50s era genetic research. I'm gonna be asking around the faculty, though, because if it's useful, I will go ahead and write her a biography, and you can bet that shit's going on Wikipedia. :)

[flewellyn]

I've noticed that articles on Wikipedia about women who are or were scientists tend to get much higher "notability" scrutiny than do articles about men who are or were, well, anything.

[the_leaking_pen]

of course, in that age, it wasnt a matter of a lab full of tech's working under the auspice's of the big kahuna. I'm willing to lay even money that it was him, her, and MAYBE a pre-doc who washed test tubes for them.

[hypatiasghost]

That's a bet you'd lose, my friend, but only because the lab in question was pretty much the center of genetic research in the United States in the 40s and 50s. Lewis ran the fly room at CalTech, which he had inherited from Thomas Hunt Morgan (the guy who discovered chromosomes).

Plenty of labs now are still as you describe -- a PI, a post-doc, and a grad student or two. But that one and a few others, even at the time, were big places.