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Article ID: CBB001250825

The Cold War Context of the Golden Jubilee, Or, Why We Think of Mendel as the Father of Genetics (2012)

Wolfe, Audra Jayne (Author)

Journal of the History of Biology
Volume: 45, no. 3
Issue: 3
Pages: 389-414
Publication date: 2012
Language: English

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Cold War Memorials; commemorations Science and politics Genetics Breeding Science and ideology 20th century, late United States Lysenko, Trofim Denisovich Mendel, Gregor Johann Rockefeller Foundation

In September 1950, the Genetics Society of America (GSA) dedicated its annual meeting to a Golden Jubilee of Genetics that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the rediscovery of Mendel's work. This program, originally intended as a small ceremony attached to the coattails of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) meeting, turned into a publicity juggernaut that generated coverage on Mendel and the accomplishments of Western genetics in countless newspapers and radio broadcasts. The Golden Jubilee merits historical attention as both an intriguing instance of scientific commemoration and as an early example of Cold War political theatre. Instead of condemning either Lysenko or Soviet genetics, the Golden Jubilee would celebrate Mendel -- and, not coincidentally, the practical achievements in plant and animal breeding his work had made possible. The American geneticists' focus on the achievements of Western genetics as both practical and theoretical, international, and, above all, non-ideological and non-controversial, was fully intended to demonstrate the success of the Western model of science to both the American public and scientists abroad at a key transition point in the Cold War. An implicit part of this article's argument, therefore, is the pervasive impact of the Cold War in unanticipated corners of postwar scientific culture.

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Description On the Genetics Society of America's 1950 meeting celebrating the 50th anniversary of the rediscovery of Mendel's work.

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