Animal Breeding and its Influence on the Identity of Genetics

Jenny Marie
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

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     Last modified: February 14, 2005
     Presentation date: 07/17/2005 11:00 AM in ROZH 105
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Abstract
In the "Genealogy, Pure Lines and Radiation: Towards a Cultural History of Classical Genetics" session, I will explore the relationship between animal breeders and geneticists in Britain between 1900 and 1940. This will increase our understanding of how genetics developed, and how it created an identity for itself distinct from all the other groups of people who were also interested in the phenomena of heredity and variation. While the story I tell is mainly focused on Britain, similar stories could be told of America and other European countries. Equally though I focus on genetics, I cannot avoid mentioning sex physiologists, and thus the story I tell has a broader importance to the history of biology.

In the paper, I will focus on the relationship between geneticists, rabbit breeders and poultry breeders. Poultry breeders always had a close relationship with geneticists. This was partly because, as poultry were fancy animals, breeders had created pedigree lines that differed from each other in structural characters. It was also partly because as an agricultural animal, whose importance as such increased significantly between 1890 and 1930, poultry genetics was seen as being of direct utility. This meant it could tap into government funding for agricultural research, which also increased significantly after 1910. Rabbit breeding did not have the same traditional relationship with genetics, but rabbit genetics had always been studied because rabbits were fancy animals and thus different pedigree breeds were available for genetic work. Furthermore, during WWI rabbits became industrially important animals in Britain. During the late 1920s and 1930s, rabbit breeders strongly encouraged the links between them and geneticists.

While my paper will explore the nature of these links, I will focus on the significance of them. I will show that the relationship geneticists had to animal breeders influenced the identity that geneticists forged for themselves during this same time period. Problems of breeding, such as how to sex chicks as early as possible, became adopted into the domain of genetics. The perceived relevance that genetics thus had to animal breeding resulted in it being studied alongside sex physiology in agricultural research institutes. This meant that genetics and sex physiology had very close ties in Britain. So close, in fact, that one American geneticist, L.C. Dunn, claimed that sex physiology was part of genetics in Britain.

Finally, I will show that during the 1930s the agricultural/horticultural focus of genetics began to change. Some of this change came from geneticists themselves, who wanted to pursue their interest in eugenics and thus human genetics. Some of it came from zoologists, who wanted to follow the example of America, and become more experimental. Genetics did not lose its links with animal breeders during this time. On the contrary, the links with rabbit breeders became closer. But with the rise of humans, mice and Drosophila as genetic organisms in Britain, the identity of genetics was no longer so closely associated with the relationship it had with animal breeding.

Multiple Paper Session:
Other papers in this session:
Between Genetics and Biometry: Franz Boas’ Concept of a ‘Family Line’, 1890-1912
From Plant Breeding to Heredity. Clones and Pure Lines
Genealogy and human heredity in Germany around 1900
Towards a holistic understanding of the organism: The model organisms of German genetics in the twenties