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This class explores the history of the life sciences over the course of the last century, with an emphasis on model organisms and how they shape research. The great puzzles of evolution, heredity, and development were posed in the nineteenth century, by naturalists working with a series of plants and animals including barnacles, pigeons and peas. The century just past delved deeper into the mechanisms of these processes using new model organisms. In the first few decades of the century, various experiments were conducted on that most intractable of organisms, Homo sapiens. After the Second World War, researchers from the physical sciences seized on tools like bacteriophage, which seemed to straddle the organic and inorganic worlds. Other organisms such as mice and fruit flies leant themselves to the standardization, replication and circulation demanded by global scientific co-operation and competition. By the century’s end, laboratory animals could be genetically engineered to answer specific research questions. This course will explore how our experimental engagement with the non-human world has begun to unlock the secrets of life, opening up unprecedented manipulative and predictive powers for our endlessly inquisitive species.

Introduction: Revisiting Garland Allen’s Views on the History of the Life Sciences in the Twentieth Century