H. Bentley Glass | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 17, 1906 |
| Died | January 16, 2005 (2005-01-17) (aged 98) Boulder, Colorado |
| Education | Baylor University,University of Texas |
| Known for | EditingThe Quarterly Review of Biology andScience, as well as several influential symposium volumes |
| Awards | AAAS Philip Hauge Abelson Prize(1991) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Genetics |
| Institutions | Johns Hopkins University State University of New York at Stony Brook |
| Doctoral advisor | Hermann Joseph Muller |
Hiram Bentley Glass (January 17, 1906 – January 16, 2005) was an Americangeneticist and notedcolumnist.
Born inChina tomissionary parents, he attended college atBaylor University inTexas.[2] He then furthered his education at theUniversity of Texas, where he received hisPh.D. degree under the mentorship of geneticistHermann Joseph Muller. His first major academic appointment was atJohns Hopkins University, where he was also a regular columnist for theBaltimore Evening Sun newspaper. He taught atStephens College inColumbia, Missouri and atGoucher College in Maryland before joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins.
Glass was a frequent attendee of theCold Spring Harbor Laboratory Symposia. In 1965, Glass became the first academic vice-president and professor of biological sciences at theState University of New York at Stony Brook. He was an honorary member of theNational Association of Biology Teachers.[3] He was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts & Sciences and the United StatesNational Academy of Sciences in 1959,[4][5] and to theAmerican Philosophical Society in 1963.[6] Glass was a critic ofcreationism.
Glass's scientific papers were donated to and are available at theAmerican Philosophical Society.
Throughout his long scientific career, he held many distinguished academic titles, including
Like his doctoral mentor H. J. Muller, Glass was deeply troubled byeugenics. In response to the views ofCharles Davenport,Morris Steggerda and others, Glass wrote an essay, "Geneticists Embattled: Their Stand Against Rampant Eugenics and Racism in America During the 1920s and 1930s" (1986). The following excerpt is emblematic:
"Let us remember that the genes which are passed down in the egg and sperm from one generation to another are simply molecules of DNA, selected over eons as providing individuals to survive in a real world and to reproduce when mature. The genes control only the kinds of proteins that are actually made in the cell and tissues of the growing, developing individual, or control the turning on and turning off of these synthetic processes at appropriate times and in appropriate tissues during development. Their effects, whether fortunate or unfortunate, depend on the circumstances of the environment, biological, social cultural. Behavior reflects the changes in state and attitude assumed by a growing, developing being as its situation becomes altered. Darwinian evolution is based on the selection (read “preservation” or “perpetuation”) of whatever genetic differences promote survival and reproduction, although that may include even such forms of behavior as altruism if thereby genes like those of the self-sacrificing individual are preserved in the related beings saved from death or infertility. But the circumstances—-that is, the environment—-define what is a “good” gene and what is a “bad” one. The flaw inSocial Darwinism, and likewise in the over-extended sociobiology, is to ignore the interdependency of genes and environment—-to think in absolute terms of good or bad genes, good or bad phenotypes."
(excerpt from "Geneticists Embattled," p. 148)
In collaboration withWilliam McElroy he edited several symposium volumes, includingThe chemical basis of heredity,[7] with authors includingFrançois Jacob,Erwin Chargaff,Severo Ochoa,Arthur Kornberg,Max Delbrück andFrancis Crick. In his review ofThe chemical basis of heredity[8]Conrad Waddington wrote as follows:
It deals with the most fundamental problem of analytical biology — the chemical nature and functioning of the basic units on which biological organisms are based. The contributors are ... of the very highest standard ... Workers in the large field of chromosomes, genes, nucleic acids and viruses will find the book essential.
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