John Burdon Sanderson or J. B. S. Haldane (1892–1964) was born in Oxford on November 5 and, as the author of The Causes of Evolution (1932), became a founder of what was later called the modern evolutionary synthesis of population genetics. Haldane was also an influential popularizer of science who in essays, fiction, and even verse emphasized the need to develop an ethical framework within which human beings may assimilate emerging technologies. He died on December 1 in Bhubaneswar, India.

With remarkable prescience, Haldane foresaw discoveries in molecular biology and genetic engineering. In Daedalus or Science and the Future (1923), he argued that scientific progress in these areas would bring confusion and misery to humankind unless accompanied by progress in ethics. Ideas from Daedalus influenced his friend Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World (1932), and Haldane served as the model for the biologist in Huxley's Antic Hay (1923). Forty...