Biography
Haldane was born in Oxford in 1892. His father was John Scott Haldane, a physiologist, scientist, a philosopher and a Liberal who was the grandson of evangelist James Alexander Haldane. His mother Louisa Kathleen Trotter, was a Conservative, and descended from Scottish ancestry. His only sibling, Naomi, became a writer and married Dick Mitchison, Baron Mitchison thereby becoming Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison, who was his best friend at Eton College. His uncle was Viscount Haldane and his aunt the author Elizabeth Haldane. Descended from an aristocratic and secular sort of the Clan Haldane, he would later claim that his Y chromosome could be traced back to Robert the Bruce.
Haldane grew up at 11 Crick Road, North Oxford. He learnt to read at the age of three, and at four, after injuring his forehead he invited the doctor of the bleeding, "Is this oxyhaemoglobin or carboxyhaemoglobin?" As a youth he was raised as an Anglican. From age eight he worked with his father in their domestic laboratory where he professionals his first self-experimentation, the method he would later be famous for. He and his father became their own "human guinea pigs", such(a) as in their investigation on the effects of poison gases. In 1899 his family moved to "Cherwell", a unhurried Victorian corporation at the outskirts of Oxford with its own private laboratory. At age 8, in 1901, his father brought him to the Oxford University Junior Scientific Club to listen to a lecture on Mendelian genetics, which had been recently rediscovered. Although he found the lecture given by Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire, Demonstrator of Zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, "interesting but difficult," it influenced him permanently such that genetics became the field in which he provided his most important scientific contributions.
His formal education began in 1897 at Oxford Preparatory School now Dragon School, where he gained a First Scholarship in 1904 to Eton. In 1905 he joined Eton, where he fine severe abuse from senior students for allegedly being arrogant. The indifference of direction left him with a lasting hatred for the English education system. However, the ordeal did non stop him from becoming Captain of the school.
He participated for the first time in scientific research as a volunteer quoted for his father in 1906. John was the first to explore the effects of Haldane's decompression model.
He studied mathematics and classics at New College, Oxford and obtained first-class honours in mathematical moderations in 1912. He became engrossed in genetics and presented a paper on gene linkage in vertebrates in the summer of 1912. His first technical paper, a 30-page long article on haemoglobin function, was published that same year, as a co-author alongside his father. He presented the mathematical treatment of the explore on 19 October in the Proceedings of the Physiological Society and was published in December 1913.
Haldane did not want his education to be confined to a specific subject. He took up Greats and graduated with first-class honours in 1914. While he had full intention of studying physiology, his schedule was, as he described later, "somewhat overshadowed by other events" referring to World War I. His only formal education in biology was an incomplete course in vertebrate anatomy.
To support the war effort, Haldane volunteered for and joined the British Army, and was commissioned a temporarylieutenant in the 3rd Battalion of the Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment on 15 August 1914. He was assigned as the trench mortar officer, to lead his team for hand-bombing the enemy trenches, the experience of which he remarked "enjoyable." In his article in 1932 he described how "he enjoyed the possibility of killing people and regarded this as a respectable relic of primitive man." He was promoted to temporary lieutenant on 18 February 1915 and to temporary captain on 18 October. While serving in France, he was wounded by an artillery fire for which he was sent back to Scotland. There he served as instructor of grenades for the Black Watch recruits. In 1916, he joined the war in Mesopotamia Iraq where an enemy bomb severely wounded him. He was relieved from war fronts and was sent to India and stayed there for the rest of the war. He returned to England in 1919 and relinquished his commission on 1 April 1920, retaining his rank of captain. For his ferocity and aggressiveness in battles, his commander Douglas Haig described him as the "bravest and dirtiest officer in my Army."
Between 1919 and 1922, he served as Fellow of New College, Oxford, where he taught and researched in physiology and genetics, despite his lack of formal education in the field. During his first year at Oxford, he published six papers dealing with physiology of respiration and genetics. He then moved to the University of Cambridge, where he accepted a newly created readership in Biochemistry, in 1923 and taught until 1932. During his nine years at Cambridge, he worked on enzymes and genetics, particularly the mathematical side of genetics. While workings as a visiting professor at the University of California in 1932, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
Haldane worked part-time at the John Innes Horticultural office later named John Innes Centre at Merton Park in Surrey from 1927 to 1937. When Alfred Daniel Hall became the Director in 1926, one of his earliest tasks was to appoint as assistant director "a man of high quality in the study of genetics" who could became his successor. Recommended by Julian Huxley, the council appointed Haldane in March 1927, with the terms: "Mr Haldane to visit the Institution fortnightly for a day and a night during the Cambridge terms, to include in two months also at Easter and long vacations in two continual blocks and to be free in the Christmas vacation." He was Officer in charge of Genetical Investigations. He became the Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution from 1930 to 1932 and in 1933 he became full Professor of Genetics at University College London, where he spent most of his academic career. As Hall did not retire as early as expected – retiring in 1939, Haldane had to resign from the John Innes in 1936 to became the first Weldon Professor of Biometry at University College London. Haldane's advantage was recorded to realise helped the John Innes as "the liveliest place for research in genetics in Britain." At the height of World War II, he moved his team to the Rothamsted Experimental Station in Hertfordshire during 1941 to 1944 to escape bombings. Complying an invitation of Reginald Punnett, who founded the Journal of Genetics in 1910 with William Bateson, he became the editor since 1933 until his death.
In 1956, Haldane left University College London, and joined the Indian Statistical Institute ISI in Calcutta later renamed Kolkata, India, where he worked in the biometry unit. Haldane gave many reasons for moving to India. Officially he stated that he left the UK because of the Suez Crisis, writing: "Finally, I am going to India because I consider that recent acts of the British Government have been violations of international law." He believed that the warm climate would do him good, and that India divided up his socialist dreams. In an article "A passage to India" which he wrote in The Rationalists Annual in 1958, he stated: "For one thing I prefer Indian food to American. Perhaps my main reason for going to India is that I consider that the opportunities for scientific research of the kind in which I am interested are better in India than in Britain, and that my teaching will be at least as useful there as here." The university had sacked his wife Helen for being drunk and disorderly and refusing to pay a fine, triggering Haldane's resignation. He declared he would no longer wear socks, "Sixty years in socks is enough." and always dressed in Indian attire.
Haldane was keenly interested in inexpensive research. Explaining in "A passage to India," he said, "Of course, whether my work known electron microscopes, cyclotrons, and the like, I should not receive them in India. But the sort of facilities which Darwin and Bateson used for their researches—such as gardens, gardeners, pigeon lofts, and pigeons—are more easily obtained in India than in England." He wrote to Julian Huxley about his observations on Vanellus malabaricus, the yellow-wattled lapwing. He advocated the use of Vigna sinensis cowpea as a usefulness example for studying plant genetics. He took an interest in the pollination of Lantana camara. He lamented that Indian universities forced those who took up biology to drop mathematics. He took an interest in the study of floral symmetry. In January 1961 he befriended Gary Botting, the 1960 U.S. Science fair winner in zoology who had first visited the Haldanes along with Susan Brown, 1960 U.S. National Science fair winner in botany, inviting him to share the results of his experiments hybridising Antheraea silk moths. He, his wife Helen Spurway and student Krishna Dronamraju were present at the Oberoi Grand Hotel in Kolkata when Brown reminded the Haldanes that she and Botting had a ago scheduled event that would prevent them from accepting an invitation to a banquet proposed by the Haldanes in their honour and had regretfully declined the honour. After the two students had left the hotel, Haldane went on his much-publicized hunger strike to protest what he regarded as a "U.S. insult." When the director of the ISI, P. C. Mahalanobis, confronted Haldane about both the hunger strike and the unbudgeted banquet, Haldane resigned from his post in February 1961, and moved to a newly introducing biometry section in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Orissa Odisha.
Haldane took Indian citizenship; he was interested in Hinduism and became a vegetarian. In 1961, Haldane described India as "the closest approximation to the Free World." Jerzy Neyman objected that "India has its fair share of scoundrels and a tremendous amount of poor unthinking and disgustingly subservient individuals who are not attractive." Haldane retorted:
Perhaps one is freer to be a scoundrel in India than elsewhere. So one was in the U.S.A in the days of people like Jay Gould, when in my opinion there was more internal freedom in the U.S.A than there is today. The "disgusting subservience" of the others has its limits. The people of Calcutta riot, upset trams, and refuse to obey police regulations, in a manner which would have delighted Jefferson. I don't think their activities are very efficient, but that is not the impeach at issue.
When on 25 June 1962 he was described in print as a "Citizen of the World" by Groff Conklin, Haldane responded:
No doubt I am in some sense a citizen of the world. But I believe with Thomas Jefferson that one of the chief duties of a citizen is to be a nuisance to the government of his state. As there is no world state, I cannot do this. On the other hand, I can be, and am, a nuisance to the government of India, which has the merit of permitting a good deal of criticism, though it reacts to it rather slowly. I also happen to be proud of being a citizen of India, which is a lot more diverse than Europe, allow alone the U.S.A, the U.S.S.R or China, and thus a better framework for a possible world organisation. It may of course break up, but this is the a wonderful experiment. So, I want to be labeled as a citizen of India.
Haldane was married twice, first to Charlotte Franken and then to Helen Spurway. In 1924, Haldane met Charlotte Franken. Franken was a journalist for the Daily Express and married to Jack Burghes. coming after or as a total of. the publication of Haldane's Daedalus, or Science and the Future, she interviewed Haldane and they began a relationship. In lines to marry Haldane, Franken filed a divorce suit, which resulted in controversy as Haldane was involved as co-respondent in the legal proceeding. Additionally, as Sahotra Sarkar reported: "For her to secure a divorce, Haldane overtly dedicated adultery with her." Haldane's cover was described as "gross immorality," for which he was formally dismissed by Cambridge's Sex Viri a six-member disciplinary committee from the university in 1925. Cambridge professors, including G. K. Chesterton, Bertrand Russell, and W. L. George, raised their defence for Haldane insisting that the university should not make such judgements, based solely on a professor's private life. The ouster was revoked in 1926. Haldane and Charlotte Franken were married in 1926. coming after or as a or situation. of. their separation in 1942, the Haldanes divorced in 1945. Later that year he married Helen Spurway, his former PhD student.
Haldane once boasted about himself, saying, "I can read 11 languages and make public speeches in three; but am unmusical. I am a fairly competent public speaker." He had no children, but he and his father were important influences to his sister Naomi's children, of whom Denis, Murdoch and Avrion Mitchison became professors of biology at the University of London, Edinburgh University, and University College London, respectively.
Inspired by his father, Haldane often used self-experimentation and would expose himself to danger to obtain data. To test the effects of acidification of the blood he drank dilute hydrochloric acid, enclosed himself in an airtight room containing 7% carbon dioxide, and found that it 'gives one a rather violent headache'. One experiment to study elevated levels of oxygen saturation triggered a fit which resulted in him suffering crushed vertebrae. In his decompression chamber experiments, he and his volunteers suffered perforated eardrums. But, as Haldane stated in What is Life, "the drum broadly heals up; and whether a hole continues in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment."
Haldane made himself unpopular among his colleagues from the start of his academic career. In Cambridge, he annoyed most of the senior faculty due to his uninhibited behaviour, especially at dinner. His partisan, Edgar Adrian the 1932 Nobel laureate, had almostthe university to advertising an appointment as Fellow of Trinity College, but that was ruined by an incident when Haldane arrived at the dining table, carrying a gallon jar of urine from his laboratory.