This is a timeline of major events in the science of genomics: the science of DNA encoding and how genes work. This introduction is my personal statement about the importance of science history in science education and how we learn to do great science.
Introduction: Why History is Important in Science Education
History is the context from which modern scientific ideas have originated. Without an awareness of the progression of scientific thought, how can one expect to continue that progression?
These ideas were conceived and pursued by people like us, and they, like us, ultimately must have aspired to have been appreciated for their contributions to human understanding. We owe it to ourselves to honor them, and if we do not, how can we expect the future to honor us?
And after all, since I assume self-education motivates the reader, we need not bother ourselves with the “facts-only factory-floor efficiency” by which we indoctrinate our American public school children. Without context, there is fundamentally no empirical difference between a book on biology and a book on religion. History is the origin of that context. By history, we can learn the process by which ideas are explored and validated, specifically, explored and validated not by mythical heroes, but by people quite like us.
I think it’s time that the scientific community, rather than lamenting the encroachment of peasant-thought in our society, should instead assume responsibility and more aggressive cultural leadership. … Continue Reading »
This is a timeline of major events in the science of genomics: the science of DNA encoding and how genes work. Part 1 begins from Hooke’s observation of the cell in 1665 to the rediscovery of Mendel’s particulate theory of genetics in 1900, the beginning of the science of modern genetics, the science of heredity.
To 1859: Fundamentals of Cellular Biology
1665: British scientist and Issac Newton’s rival Robert Hook coins the term “cell” and publishes Micrographia.
The cell is the fundamental unit of life in which all virtually all life functions occur. Awareness of the cell is a prerequisite to the study of biochemistry, genetics, and genomics.
Poor Hooke will be probably forever known best as Newton’s rival for his competing work about gravity and light. Hooke is otherwise best remembered for Hooke’s Law of elasticity: <em>F = -kx</em>
1806: French chemist Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin isolates the first amino acid, asparagine.
Asparagine is one of 20 naturally occurring amino acids. Vauquelin himself is best known for discovering two elements in the course of his meticulous experimental career: beryllium and chromium.
1831: British botanist Robert Brown describes and names the nucleus in plant cells —a discovery which he humbly presented embedded in a pamphlet about orchid sexual organs.
In eukaryotic cells, the cells of multi-cellular life, the nucleus is an organelle which contains and copies the cell’s DNA —its genetic information.
Brown, like his peer Charles Darwin, was an appointed expeditionary naturalist on a sea voyage to Australia. Unlike Darwin, despite Brown’s discovery of about 1700 new plant species and 140 plant genera from around the world, Brown’s greatest achievements came not from his vast observations abroad but from the very small and near. While observing pollen under a microscope, Brown noticed that the grains seemed to dart about randomly. In 1905, Albert Einstein postulated that this “Brownian motion” was direct evidence of molecular action, thus supporting the atomic theory of matter. … Continue Reading »
Think Gene at Technorati
