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Cyril Dean Darlington (19 December 1903 - 26 March 1981) was an English biologist, geneticist and eugenicist, who discovered the mechanics of chromosomal crossover, its role in inheritance, and therefore its importance to evolution. Events 324 - Licinius abdicates his position as Roman Emperor. Year 1903 ( MCMIII) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link will display calendar of the Gregorian calendar or a Common year starting Events 1026 - Pope John XIX crowns Conrad II as Holy Roman Emperor. Year 1981 ( MCMLXXXI) was a Common year starting on Thursday (link displays the 1981 England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland A biologist is a Scientist devoted to and producing results in Biology through the study of Organisms Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship A geneticist is a scientist who studies Genetics, the science of Heredity and variation of Organisms A geneticist can be employed as a researcher Eugenics is a social Philosophy which advocates the improvement of Human Hereditary traits through various forms of intervention eVolution is the third Album by eLDee, it was due to be released in 2008

Contents

Biography

Early life

Cyril Darlington was born in Chorley, a small cotton town in Lancashire, England in 1903. Chorley is a Market town in Lancashire, in North West England. Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England, bounded to the west by the Irish Sea England is a Country which is part of the United Kingdom. Its inhabitants account for more than 83% of the total UK population whilst its mainland His father, William was a teacher at a small school. He had one brother six years older. When he was eight, the family moved to London. His childhood was an unhappy one, characterized by a stern, bitter and frustrated father, who struggled mightily against poverty. He enjoyed neither sports, nor studies. He began to cultivate a disdain for authority. He decided to become a farmer in Australia, so he applied to the South Eastern Agricultural College at Wye, known later as Wye College. The College of St Gregory and St Martin at Wye, more commonly known as Wye College, is an educational institution in Kent, United Kingdom. He was a rather indifferent student, but his social life took a decided turn for the better when he took up boxing, with some success. He was now six feet three inches tall, and an imposing figure. One subject that captured his imagination, however, was Mendelian genetics, taught by a Mr. Brade-Birks. He discovered Thomas Hunt Morgan's The Physical Basis of Heredity. Thomas Hunt Morgan ( September 25, 1866 &ndash December 4, 1945) was an American geneticist and embryologist. He graduated with a London University degree in 1923. Year 1923 ( MCMXXIII) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar.

Early professional years

After being turned down for a scholarship to go to Trinidad as a farmer, Cyril was induced in 1923 by one of his professors to apply for a scholarship at the John Innes Horticultural Institution in Merton. He wrote at once to its director, William Bateson, famous for having introduced the word "genetics" into biology. William Bateson ( Robin Hood's Bay, August 8 1861 &ndash February 8 1926 was a British Geneticist, a Fellow of St His application was unsuccessful, but he wrangled a temporary post as an unpaid technician. It was an interesting time for the Innes. Bateson had spent the last two decades fighting against the notion that chromosomes were the seat of what he had been calling "heredity factors" and had only very recently capitulated. He had just hired a cytologist, Frank Newton, who now began to take Cyril under his wing. Darlington published his first scientific paper, on the tetraploidy of the sour cherry, and he was hired as a permanent employee. Polyploidy occurs in cells and Organisms when there are more than two homologous sets of Chromosomes.

Shortly after, both of his mentors, Bateson and Newton, died within a year of each other and J.B.S. Haldane came to the Innes. John Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS ( 5 November 1892 &ndash 1 December 1964) known as Jack (but who used 'J Although neither an experimentalist nor cytologist, Haldane formed a close friendship with Darlington, whose self-confidence grew. He began to make significant contributions to the understanding of the relationship of genetic crossing-over and the microscopically observed events that the chromosome passed through during mitosis (It seems that meiosis should be mentioned here rather than mitosis). In 1931 he began writing the book that would establish his reputation, Recent Advances in Cytology. It was published in 1932, and created a firestorm of controversy at first, then nearly universal acceptance as a work of the first rank. He showed that the mechanisms of evolution that acted at the level of the chromosome created possibilities far more rich than the simple mutations and deletions that affect single genes.

His now remarkable determination and achievement saw him become Director of the cytology department in 1937 and became director of the Innes two years later, just 15 years after his arrival as an unpaid volunteer. Year 1937 ( MCMXXXVII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 20 March 1941. Events 1600 - The Linköping Bloodbath takes place on Maundy Thursday in Linköping, Sweden. Year 1941 ( MCMXLI) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (the link will display 1941 calendar of the Gregorian calendar. A few months after that, he was awarded the prestigious Darwin Medal. The Darwin Medal is given by the Royal Society every even year for "work of acknowledged distinction in the broad area of Biology in which Charles Darwin He was elected president of the Genetical Society. In 1947 he co-founded with Ronald Fisher the highly successful journal "Heredity: An International Journal of Genetics. Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, FRS ( 17 February 1890 – 29 July 1962) was an English Statistician, Evolutionary "

Later years

He left the Innes in 1953 and accepted the Sherardian chair of botany at Oxford University. The University of Oxford (informally "Oxford University" or simply "Oxford" located in the city of Oxford, Oxfordshire, England is the He developed a keen interest in the Botanic Garden, going on to establish the 'Genetic Garden'. He was also involved in extending the teaching of science, especially genetics, in the university. He voiced strong support for hereditarians in an increasingly hostile academic environment. In 1972 he, along with 50 other prominent scientists signed "Resolution on Scientific Freedom Regarding Human Behavior and Heredity" in which a genetic approach to understanding the behavior of man was strongly defended. He staunchly defended his colleague in the fight against Lysenkoism, John Baker, who published the controversial book "Race" in 1974. Dr John Randal Baker FRS (1900-1984 was a biologist, physical anthropologist, and professor at the University of Oxford (where he was the Races are, according to Baker (and Darlington), breeding populations with demarcations drawn at whatever level of detail is required for the problem at hand. Asked by a reporter for the Sunday times whether or not he was a racist, Darlington replied: "Well, I'm regarded as one by everyone except the Jews, who are racist, and who utterly agree with my views. "

Darlington retired from his official position at the University in 1971, but remained in the university, tirelessly writing and publishing his work. He died in Oxford in 1981. He had five children, two of whom committed suicide.

Sociobiology and the Lysenko Affair

In his later years, Darlington increased his participation in the public debate about the role of science in society, and especially, its interaction with politics and government. He published, beginning in 1948, very strong condemnations of the events in the Soviet Union, which had denounced Mendelian genetics and officially outlawed its practice in favor of Lysenkoism. Lysenkoism was a set of repressive political and social campaigns in science and Agriculture by the powerful Stalinist director of the Soviet Lenin All-Union Some genetics institutes were destroyed, and prominent geneticists were purged or murdered. These events caused an upheaval among the leaders of genetics in the west, many of whom were leftist, socialists or even communist sympathizers and Marxists. This caused a break between Haldane and Darlington, who was intransigent in his anti-authoritarian views.

Darlington developed a strong interest in the application of genetic insights to the understanding of human history. He believed that not only were there differences in the character and culture between individuals, but that these differences also exist between races. Understanding of these differences in scientific terms was not only interesting in its own right, but was crucial to the development of a civil society.

The nature of his views on race is well illustrated by his essay in Human Variation: The Biopsychology of Age, Race, and Sex (Academic Press 1978). Darlington writes that "as slaves," Africans "improved in health and increased in numbers. " The environment was "more favorable than anything they had experienced in Africa. " According to Darlington, emancipation resulted in the withdrawal of "discipline" and "protection" resulting in social problems such as unemployment "drugs, gambling and prostitution. " Darlington concluded: "The intellectually well-endowed races, classes, and societies have a moral responsibility for the problems of race mixture, of immigration and exploitation, that have arisen from their exercise of economic and political power. They may hope to escape from these responsibilities by claiming an intellectual and, therefore, moral equality between all races, classes, and societies. But the chapters of this book, step by step, deprive them of the scientific and historical evidence that might support such a comfortable illusion. "

Darlington was opposed to the UNESCO Statement of Race. The Race Question is a UNESCO statement issued on 18 July, 1950 following World War II. He agreed with Darwin's classical view: "The races differ also in constitution, in acclimatization, and in liability to certain diseases. Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual, faculties. " Contrary to the UNESCO statement. United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization ( UNESCO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations established on November 16 Darlington thought that there might be a biological justification to prohibit interracial marriages "if intermarriage were not contrary to the habits of all stable communities and therefore in no need of discouragement". Interracial marriage occurs when two people of differing racial groups marry, often creating Multiracial children He refused to sign the revised 1951 statement which conceded that racial differences in intelligence possibly existed. Darlington's dissenting commentary was printed with the statement. [1]

Over the course of twenty five years, from 1953-1978, Darlington completed his trilogy on Man: Genetics and Man]] (1953), The Evolution of Man and Society(1969) and finally The Little Universe of Man (1978). In these he tried to show how the history of man can be at least partially analyzed in terms of genetic laws, breeding patterns, founder effects and Darwinian evolution. Darlington's views were an unusual endorsement of the complementary virtues of inbreeding, as well as of outbreeding.

Method and personality

Darlington's personality was one of a remarkable combination of anti-authoritarianism, non-conformism, and scientific rationalism. He was as courageous in fighting the evils of Lysenkoism, as he was in combating the emerging academic orthodoxy on the nature of race. His method was not that of a simple bench scientist, but ranged far into the hinterlands of human existence. His penchant for speculation and theorizing was his strongest tool for arriving at new insights and truth. He said ". . . I have never proved anything. I do not count on doing so. . . What I do count on is to assemble such evidences and arguments as will make those who disagree with me feel more and more uncomfortable. "

Notes

  1. ^ http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0007/000733/073351eo.pdf “The Race Concept: Results of an Inquiry”, p. 27. UNESCO 1952

References

Books by Darlington

(A partial list)

External links

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