NATURE|Vol 453|26 June 2008 OPINION behind the collapse of the Gloucester and New the north Atlantic. Visitors to Gloucester will fundamental nature of the science at stake, the England fisheries. Until we reveal these dual love the book and the town’s many charming battles Schwartz recounts were fierce. Friend- roles and the ensuing pathologies, there will be features described in its pages. They will think ships were destroyed, careers threatened. After no rebuilding, no renewal of the fisheries. of the fish and shake their heads at such a loss, a particularly contentious meeting about the I suspect that this book, ironically, will find still failing to understand. ■ genetics of horse coat colour at the Royal Soci- popularity among the tourists who flock to a Daniel Pauly is professor of fisheries and director ety in London, Pearson hissed at Hurst, “You gentrified Gloucester. Under Kurlansky’s dis- of the Fisheries Centre at the University of British shall never be Fellow here as long as I live”. approving gaze, they will gradually displace the Columbia, 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, Other high spots in the book include the early fishermen, as in most fishing towns around British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada. and now largely forgotten work on cytologi- cal genetics by Walter Sutton and Edmund B. Wilson, involving years of eye-strain from squinting at confusing chromosomal prepara- tions of sea urchins, aphids and grasshoppers. Making genetic history These studies established that different chro- mosomes carry different hereditary factors, yet In Pursuit of the Gene: From Darwin to DNA the book may, sadly, remove it from the ambit occur in pairs that become separated during by James Schwartz of popular science. the formation of gametes in meiosis, giving Harvard University Press: 2008. 384 pp. The book’s apogee is its tale of the “Mendel essential physical support for Mendel’s laws. $29.95, £19.95, ¤22.50 Wars” around the beginning of the twentieth The book’s longest section details the century, the struggle to bring together Men- immense contributions of research on the del’s ideas on heredity and Darwin’s theory of fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster to our under- When I was a student, ‘doing genetics’ meant evolution. On one side were the Mendelians, standing of heredity. Schwartz explains how, crossing two different strains or species. Now including Francis Galton, William Bateson from 1912 to around 1930, Morgan and his it means sequencing DNA, preferably human. and Charles Hurst, who accepted Mendelism ‘boys’, Alfred Sturtevant and Calvin Bridges, Between these two poles lies the history of but considered natural selection as ineffective, along with Muller, were “responsible for the genetics, a pathway fraught with sharp turns, seeing evolution as occurring by ‘macromuta- integration of Mendelism and the chromosome steep gradients and dead ends — and engag- tions’, or single genetic changes of very large theory that is the basis of genetics”. Within a ingly recounted in James Schwartz’s new book. effect. On the other side stood the biometri- few years, this conjunction of remarkable intel- Despite its subtitle, In Pursuit of the Gene is cians, most notably Karl Pearson and Raphael lects in a tiny laboratory led to methods for not a comprehensive history of genetics, but Weldon, who accepted the ubiquity of Darwin- mapping chromosomes both genetically and focuses solely on classical genetics. Schwartz, ian selection but rejected Mendelian genet- cytologically, and to the discovery of sex link- a science writer, begins with Charles Darwin’s ics. Given the strong egos involved and the age, chromosome inversions, nondisjunction ill-fated ‘pangenesis’ theory of the inheritance and many other phenomena that now form the of acquired characteristics, and runs through dogma of transmission genetics. the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s work on Alas, here we find a major flaw. Schwartz inherited traits. The story continues with the notes that he was inspired to write his his- consolidation of Mendelism and chromo- tory by reading Elof Carlson’s worshipful somal inheritance by Thomas Hunt Morgan biography of Muller, Genes, Radiation, and BETTMANN/CORBIS and his students in the ‘Fly Room’ lab at New Society (Cornell University Press, 1981). But York’s Columbia University, where mod- this only generates further hagiography: the ern genetics began, and concludes in 1946 discussion of Muller’s work occupies a quar- with Hermann Joseph Muller’s Nobel Prize ter of In Pursuit of the Gene, a disproportion- in Medicine for inducing mutations with ate chunk. Schwartz gives the impression X-rays. Later history, from the discovery by that Muller, or ideas purloined from him by Oswald Avery and colleagues that DNA was others, was behind nearly every advance in fly the ‘transforming principle’, to the Human genetics. Sturtevant’s contributions are given Genome Project, is squeezed into a 12-page short shrift, Morgan is portrayed as a conniver epilogue. Those seeking a history of molecu- who acquired his Nobel status on the backs of lar genetics should read Horace Freeland Jud- his students, and Bridges — perhaps the finest son’s magisterial The Eighth Day of Creation pair of eyes ever to peer at a magnified fly — is (Simon & Schuster, 1979). dismissed as being “famous for stealing other Many histories of genetics cover the same men’s wives as well as their ideas”. Schwartz ground. What distinguishes Schwartz’s account does not mention the work of Lewis Stadler, is his impeccable scholarship, based on many who independently discovered X-ray induc- primary sources, and his ability to keep the tion of mutations in barley at the same time narrative moving, interweaving discoveries as Muller’s work on Drosophila. Like many with the strong and eccentric personalities plant geneticists, Stadler was marginalized as a who made them. He does not slight the sci- glorified crop breeder. ence, describing experiments in detail so dense It is easy to sympathize with Muller, who had that the reader is advised to keep a pencil and Fruitful collaborations were formed in Thomas a tumultuous life and was the perennial under- paper handy. The effort required to understand Hunt Morgan’s fly genetics lab. dog: Jewish, short, bald and with a high voice. 1181 OPINION NATURE|Vol 453|26 June 2008 Fractious, and possessed of unpopular socialist together in the Fly Room, talking science as Drosophila taxonomy and, by studying the views, he floated from university to university, they worked on flies in what was a continu- action of eye-colour mutations in the fly, winding up in the Soviet Union until he fled to ous lab meeting, it is not surprising that they became the father of biochemical genetics. But escape Trofim Lysenko’s destruction of Russian shared ideas and information. After all, it was neither Sturtevant nor Bridges was obsessed genetics. Yet during all these peregrinations Sturtevant who gave Muller the idea of using with priority: Sturtevant was the most modest he maintained an uninterrupted programme lethal alleles to measure mutation rates. of men, whereas Bridges, a great womanizer, of research. It is a scandal that Muller did not The other ‘boys’ were not slouches. Bridges had more pressing interests. secure a tenured academic job until he was 55 discovered nondisjunction, thereby proving In Pursuit of the Gene should be required — he won the Nobel prize a year later. the chromosomal theory of heredity, and pub- reading for all biologists unfamiliar with Muller was one of the best geneticists of the lished it as the first paper in the first issue of the history of genetics. Schwartz shows how twentieth century, a visionary who predicted the journal Genetics. He constructed the first quickly science can advance when a group the rise of molecular genetics and the use of map of genes on autosomes, did fundamen- of first-class minds encounters a fertile but association mapping to identify genes for tal work on sex determination and produced unploughed field. Progress in genetics, as in human behaviours. He was also difficult to maps of Drosophila salivary-gland chromo- all modern science, was truly a collaborative work with, obsessed with credit and depres- somes that have never been bettered. Stur- affair. There was no Darwin of genetics — not sive to the point of once attempting suicide. tevant was the first to establish, while still an even Muller. There was, and is, plenty of credit Schwartz repeatedly states that Sturtevant, undergraduate, that genes are arrayed linearly to go around. ■ Bridges and Morgan tried to ruin Muller’s repu- on chromosomes. He devised the chromo- Jerry A. Coyne is a professor in the Department tation by stealing his ideas and slandering him, somal fate mapping later used so effectively of Ecology and Evolution at the University of but the evidence is unconvincing. Working by the geneticist Seymour Benzer, founded Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA. explain. He dreaded “the cost of putting up Swayonomics the passengers, the chain reaction of delayed flights and the blot on his reputation for being Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational may explain what happened in hindsight, but on time”. Behavior cannot be used to predict the future. Baloney. Van Zanten’s plane was one of sev- by Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman Sway is a fun read, and the brothers Brafman eral large aircraft diverted to Tenerife. They Currency/Doubleday: 2008. 224 pp. are compelling storytellers, pulling in the reader manoeuvred tightly around the runway, the $21.95 immediately and narrating at a breezy pace. But taxiway that ran parallel to it and four small the book is thin on science and thick on anec- connector taxiways between the two. Several In the Biblical parable in Matthew 25:14–29, dotes.