A History of Molecular Biology (review)

In this richly informative book, Michel Morange, a biochemist and historian of science in Paris, provides a masterful overview of the molecular biological [End Page 472] revolution, from its origins to recent years. He gives balanced attention to the several disciplines that shaped the field, tracing its birth and early development during the middle third of the twentieth century through the efforts of geneticists, a number of them renegade physicists, to identify the nature of genes and their means of replication, and of biochemists to understand the synthesis of proteins and enzymes and the role of genes in the process. He judges that the physicists—notably Max Delbrück, a leader of the phage group—insinuated an "operational" approach into molecular biology, establishing an intimate connection between theories and experimental manipulation. This transformation of outlook, Morange wryly suggests, helps to explain the "striking contrast" between the phage group's sizable reputation and the "relative scarcity of its results" (p. 44)

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