J.B.S. Haldane applied his expertise in mathematics on a cross-disciplinary basis, conducting studies in enzymes, the genetic linkage between hemophilia and color blindness, and hereditary mutation in population genetics. Using mathematical equations, Haldane was able to calculate the rates of enzyme reactions and prove that the laws of thermodynamics regulate enzyme reactions. He developed a provisional map of the X chromosome that showed genes responsible for color blindness, night blindness, skin diseases, and eye abnormalities. Experiments conducted by Haldane on carbon dioxide in the blood provided ground breaking studies in respiratory physiology.
John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was born on November 5, 1892 in Oxford, England. At an early age, John Burdon began to study science cultivated by his father, John Scott Haldane, a renowned physiologist. By the age of eight, he was helping in his father's lab by taking mathematical notes and by age nine, his interest in genetics was piqued by a lecture on the recently rediscovered work of Gregor Mendel, the monk who pioneered studies of genetic inheritance and genes. Later, as Haldane embarked on his own scientific career, Haldane embraced his father's daring and unusual approach to experimentation. Haldane's father preferred to conduct human experiments, primarily on himself, believing that a subject that could also take notes with a cold dispassionate eye was much better than some animal tainted by fear. In the course of his career, Haldane, too, often placed himself in precarious physical conditions for the sake of his studies.
At the outbreak of World War I, Haldane, who was 22 years old, became a commissioned officer in the Third (Special Reserve) Battalion of the Scottish Black Watch regiment. In response to German chemical warfare, the military assigned Haldane to collaborate with his father and C. G. Douglas on developing gas masks. (Haldane had already assisted his father in military research in a British navy study on how to avoid decompression in deep-sea divers.) Typical of both the elder and younger Haldane, the scientists exposed themselves to toxic gases to test their designs. This assignment led to Haldane's interest in the physiology of respiration.
After the war, Haldane took a fellowship at New College, Oxford, where he soon began to teach physiology. Following up on his father's earlier studies on carbon dioxide in blood, Haldane soon began his studies of how carbon dioxide in the blood stream enables the muscles to regulate breathing under different conditions. In the course of these studies, he devised a potentially fatal experiment in which he introduced hydrochloric acid into his blood stream by drinking a water-diluted solution of ammonium chloride, an experiment which led to the eventual discovery by others that some newcorns had an extreme alkalinity of the blood that caused death.
In 1921, Haldane accepted a readership in biochemistry at Cambridge, where he studied chromosomal linkage and enzymes. In that same year, his studies on crossbreeding produced Haldane's law, which posits the absence of sex or sterility in offspring produced by crossbreeding, as in the case of a mule produced by crossbreeding a horse and a donkey. His mathematical expertise enabled him to prove that thermodynamic laws regulate enzyme reactions. He also devised elegant mathematics to calculate the rates of enzyme reactions. His book entitled Enzymes, published in 1930 and based on his lectures, provided a comprehensive yet practical view of enzymes in action.
In 1932, Haldane wrote The Causes of Evolution composed of ten dissertations that penned on naturalist Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection (the idea that entire species, or particular members of a species, who are best adapted to their environment survive and breed). Highly esoteric in nature, The Causes of Evolution focused on the mathematics of natural selection, showing how Darwin's theory could work. Haldane adhered to a conservative theory of heredity focusing on natural selection and dominant and recessive genes. Many of his equations, however, were eventually proven valid, often many years later. One particular case involved the Peppered Moth. Due to industrial pollution's decimation of white lichen, which provided a natural camouflage for the light-colored moths, the species had developed a wing-darkening gene. Haldane showed that those moths that were darker due to this gene had a 50% greater likelihood of surviving. Scientific investigation confirmed this finding nearly thirty years later.
In 1933, Haldane became Professor of Genetics at University College, London, and, in 1937, chair of biometry. At University College, Haldane focused a good deal of his work on genetics and to applying mathematical models to the study of genetics. He began to study the position of specific genes on the human X chromosome (the larger of the two sex chromosomes in humans, making it the only practicable one to investigate at that time). The provisional map that he developed in 1935 revealed the chromosome position for genes responsible for color blindness, night blindness, and several skin diseases and certain eye abnormalities. This work led to collaboration with Julia Bell that showed a genetic linkage between hemophilia and color blindness. He also published the first estimate of the genetic mutation rate in man in the journal Nature in 1936. This mathematical calculation revealed how many mutations would take place naturally in any number of generations. Two years later, in the American Naturalist, Haldane showed the effects of recurrent harmful mutations in a population.
On the recommendation of Julian Huxley, Haldane had also been appointed the part-time genetics expert at the John Innis Horticultural Institution in 1927. Over a ten-year period he contributed his mathematical expertise to the study of plant genetics, primarily on studies of the variation in flower color and of a genetic linkage theory in the ornamental plant, Primula sinensis.
In 1957, Haldane emigrated to India gaining an appointment as director of the Genetics and Biometry Laboratory in Orissa. In 1961, Haldane became a naturalized Indian citizen. Haldane died from cancer on December 1, 1964. Haldane, a pioneer of interdisciplinary research, left instructions to have his body immediately refrigerated after death so it could be used for medical research.
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