Browsing by Subject "History of Science, Technology, and Medicine"

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    A 'Fantastical' Experiment: motivations, practice, and conflict in the History of nuclear transplantation, 1925-1970.
    (2012-11) Crowe, Nathan Paul
    In 1952, Robert Briggs and Thomas King published a paper announcing the development of a new technique, nuclear transplantation, which could have profound consequences in the study of developmental biology. Forty-four years later, in 1996, researchers in Scotland used a variation of nuclear transplantation to produce a cloned sheep. The sheep was named Dolly and became a cultural, scientific, and controversial symbol for biology's successes and promises. Since then, the historical relevance of nuclear transplantation has always been its connection to the successful cloning of Dolly. I argue in this dissertation, however, that the history of nuclear transplantation before Dolly offers valuable insights into the history of developmental biology, genetics, cancer research, and bioethics. As essentially a biography of the technique, my narrative weaves together these often distinct historiographical traditions, showing the intricate institutional and intellectual connections between them. Though the first successful nuclear transplantation in vertebrates occurred in the early 1950s, this dissertation traces back the relevant historical origins to the early 1920s with the development of the cancer research center in which Briggs and his colleagues eventually worked out nuclear transplantation. In subsequent chapters this dissertation follows the development of the technique and the successes and controversies that it encountered in the 1950s related to the work of John Gurdon. From there, I show how nuclear transplantation moved from strictly a laboratory discussion to a cultural phenomenon related to human cloning in the 1960s when Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg helped co-opt nuclear transplantation to fuel democratic discussion over the direction of biological research.
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    From eugenics to public health genetics in mid-twentieth century Minnesota.
    (2011-05) Holtan, Neal Ross
    In the twentieth century, people in Minnesota experienced four developmental phases of human genetics in distinct organizational manifestations: the Minnesota Eugenics Society (organized in 1926), the Dight Institute for Human Genetics at the University of Minnesota (established in 1941), the Minnesota Human Genetics League (incorporated in 1945), and the Human Genetics Unit at the Minnesota Department of Health (authorized in 1959 and created in 1960). The first three phases are tied to the last, the unprecedented establishment of public health genetics that made Minnesota the first state to organize a public human genetics program. I examine the intellectual, scientific, and social roots of public health genetics and its relationship to the rest of public health practice before reaching the conclusion that the promise of public health genetics appeared to have been high for its proponents in the beginning, but because of the socio-cultural shifts of values in the 1970s and a poor fit with public health's traditional array of strategies, it did not thrive over time.
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    Terraforming: an investigation of the boundaries between science and hard science fiction.
    (2010-05) Schmidt, Peter Allon Jr.
    Hard science fiction is a genre of science fiction in which the fictional settings, events, and technology conform to scientific and technological laws and facts. This mixture of science and fiction creates a rich site for the development of new speculative ideas and theories in the twentieth century. One example is the idea of terraforming, wherein a planet's environment is re-engineered to support human life. Early ideas about terraforming emerged from 1930s-1960s hard science fiction. By the early twenty-first century, the idea of terraforming had been the subject of over two-hundred scientific journal articles and six different conferences sponsored by NASA and other agencies. This dissertation examines the history of the idea of terraforming; describes its cultural history; and relates that history to twentieth century American scientific, technological, and cultural developments. It argues that terraforming hard science fiction and terraforming science overlap in ways that challenge perceived boundaries of science and fiction. In doing so, this dissertation illustrates how hard science fiction can be factored into the history of science and technology as a vernacular space outside the perceived dichotomy of science and non-science.