Article ID: CBB000770674

The Birth of EMBO and the Difficult Road to EMBL (2002)

unapi

Krige, John G. (Author)


Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 33
Pages: 547--564


Publication Date: 2002
Edition Details: Part of special issue: “Molecular Biology in Postwar Europe”
Language: English

Why was the road to EMBL `more difficult than anticipated', as Francois Jacob put it? The standard account, advanced by scientists, is that it was because molecular biology did not require big, complex and expensive equipment like high-energy physics. European governments therefore lacked the incentive to pool their efforts and to build together a supranational laboratory `modeled on CERN'. This account is one-sided. It overlooks the fact that many scientists themselves were less than enthusiastic about building a European molecular biology laboratory in the early 1960s. Taking John Kendrew and Conrad Waddington as representative of two different and opposing views on how best to promote molecular biology in Europe at this time, I argue that a supranational laboratory project could only come to fruition once the field had been entrenched in national institutional niches (or after determined efforts to do so had failed). Until that time, the usual fear that a European laboratory would drain essential human and financial resources away from incipient or planned programmes in universities and national research centres dominated the horizons of most molecular biologists in Europe. Hence their preference to first establish EMBO to coordinate existing activities and only later to set up a supranational laboratory.

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Description On the European Molecular Biology Organization and the related laboratory (EMBL).


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Article Chadarevian, Soraya de; Strasser, Bruno (2002) Molecular Biology in Postwar Europe: Towards a `Global' Picture. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (p. 361). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Kurtulmus, A Faik
Irzik, Gürol
Merlin, Francesca
Nicoglou, Antonine
Thomas, Sir John Meurig
Strasser, Bruno J.
Concepts
Laboratories
Research institutes; research stations
Molecular biology
Science and politics
Government sponsored science
Science and society
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century, early
20th century
Places
United States
Europe
Great Britain
Germany
France
Shenzhen (China)
Institutions
European Molecular Biology Organization
International Laboratory of Genetics and Biophysics
华大基因 (Beijing Institute of Genomics)
International Cell Research Organization (Paris)
Ghent University
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Bombay, India)
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