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The MBL: Home Town to American Biology
| Article
# : |
14295 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1988 |
3,648 Words |
| Author
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Paul R. Gross
Paul R. Gross is vice president and provost of the University
of Virginia. From 1978 to 1986 he was president and director
of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole,
Massachusetts. He has been a faculty member and administrator
at New York University, Brown University, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and the University of Rochester. His
research has been in cell biology and the molecular biology of
development. |
Woods Hole, Massachusetts: It is not at its best as seen by those crowds of holiday-makers who pass through in summer, en route to the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. It is better seen from the sea, approaching via the great watery corridor of Vineyard Sound. Distance erases irregularities of the coastline, and the sun's angle creates shadows that delineate the scientific buildings. The Marine Biological Laboratory--"MBL" to the world's biologists--is at the center of the village, with its windows glinting in the sunlight and the red-brick volume of the Lillie Laboratory anchoring a composition of harbor islands, low hills, and edifices. This is the view that most Woods Hole scientists remember. Whether they are permanent staff or among the hundreds of MBL people who come regularly to work and study in the summer, it signals "home."
The Founding
Abundance and diversity of marine life created the necessity for permanent seaside research stations in the nineteenth century. It was a great age of biological exploration, the urgency of which was increased after that most sweeping of generalizations about life on earth, Darwinian evolution, came to be accepted. Ship-borne expeditions were not enough. If the growing analytic powers of biology, and its increasing numbers of specialists, were to be applied to the new problems of classification and relationship, of cellular versus organismal life, there needed to be facilities close to the living material in its proper environment. Thus there were a number of coastal scientific facilities established in Europe dedicated to marine research, especially marine biology.
One of them was destined to have influence far beyond this purpose. Anton Dohrn, a young German zoologist, established with his own resources a zoological station in Naples, Italy. Its purpose was simply to house independent investigators of stature, where they would be free to work on any biological problem of their choosing. The research would be marine, but the broader object of the work would be exploration of the major scientific issues.
Scholars came to the Naples station from around the world, and among them were several young Americans who would later advance American biology to where it would rival and surpass the best work of Europeans, laying the foundation for the twentieth-century biological revolution. Yet at that time, North America was still a biological backwater.
America had a few
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