An Extract From "Memoirs for Family and Friends"¹

ALL my life I have had this feeling that my ideas are changing, are evolving. I like to think of it as a mental growth, but for all I know it might be just the opposite. Its direct manifestation is a continual desire to see how things fit together and how all parts of biology relate to one another.

There is something about the human brain that makes us want to find some great scheme where all the pieces fit into one great picture. It is an inner need for a satisfactory explanation of everything. Many find God a totally satisfactory answer. If one assumes a supernatural being to be responsible for the existence and placement at any one moment of every pebble and of every living being on earth, everything has a satisfactory explanation. Others, such as myself, seek "natural" laws, where things can be explained without supernatural forces. I know first-hand how common is this desire for all-encompassing syntheses of world order because my writings have elicited a large number of letters, manuscripts, and even a few printed volumes that have been sent to me in the belief that I was a kindred soul and would be able to appreciate their grand schemes. I fear I was not a successful audience; we all like our own schemes best and tend to think of them as the only ones that exist.

If one thinks about it a bit, it is obvious that Darwin's natural selection is just such a world scheme. Darwin's idea explains so much, which is the reason for its success. Its critics complain that it is too simple: For them, world systems that embrace some mystery are far more desirable than rational ones. They say life on earth is much too rich and complex to have a simple explanation.

In my case I did not start with the universe but at the other end, with biological phenomena surrounding my early interest in the development of animals and plants. This was evident in Morphogenesis (1952), my first book on development, but then I began to think beyond development as an isolated subject and started to worry about how it fits in with the bigger scheme of things. I began to see many parallels between the events of development and the components of animal behavior that were being unwrapped at the time by Niko Tinbergen, Konrad Lorenz, and others in the new wave of ethology. In both cases, there was a whole cascading series of actions and reactions, or stimuli and responses, that produced the behavior or the development into adulthood.

I also began to ask myself questions, such as, Why do we have development at all; why go to all that bother of starting as a single cell in the form of a fertilized egg and each generation constructing a large complex adult? It slowly dawned on me that this was something that had arisen, and was maintained, by Darwinian natural selection. To compete successfully, there must be inherited variations, and sexual reproduction is a potent method of handling and disseminating that variation. In a multicellular organism, all the genes of all the cells are the same; each cell has the complete complement of the organism's genes. In every generation there is a mixture of the genes of the two parents, and this can be achieved only by the fusion of one cell from the father (sperm) and one from the mother (egg) to form the new offspring. This led me to the conclusion that development was the inevitable result of sex and size, for if there was selection pressure for an adult larger than the fertilized egg, then there had to be a development.

Just at the time (1955) some of these thoughts were taking shape in my mind, I received an invitation from G. P. Wells to give a course of three lectures at University College in London. "Gyp" Wells, the son of H. G. Wells, was a distinguished professor of invertebrate zoology. I was excited and pleased and immediately began to put some of those grand thoughts together in the form of lectures. I had written up the main ideas, and now I rewrote them completely.

The whole event was a big moment for me. I felt as though I was finally coming into full bloom, but at the same time I was terrified. This was not helped by the fact that as I took the train from Princeton to New York to go to the airport, the train came to what seemed like a permanent stop when the drawbridge over a river in New Jersey was stuck and the tracks could not be lined up properly. After an agonizing delay we finally got through and I just caught my flight.

They put me up at the Ciba Foundation on Portland Place, which was supported by the Swiss pharmaceutical company (now Novartis). A number of other scientists from all over were there as guests, and at one memorable breakfast an unidentified Englishman appeared, scowling at everyone. He surveyed all the beautiful Swiss jams and said in a furious tone, "No marmalade—hardly an English breakfast!"

I had splendid reunions with friends who had spent the war with us and were now grown up, and their families, and with Brian Shaffer from Cambridge, a good friend whose work on slime molds I particularly admired. I could hardly believe it when the Ciba Foundation put on a dinner for me the first evening, after which I gave a lecture on my recent work on slime molds that was chaired by the well-known immunologist Peter Medawar, and other distinguished biologists whom I knew only by name were there. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before—I felt like a debutante. And the main show had not yet started.

The day before the first lecture I was so nervous that I decided it might be wise to go to see a play or a film for therapeutic distraction. I found that Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap had a matinee—the perfect medicine. It had already been running for years. I was the only man in the audience, and at the intermission tea was served. I was totally distracted.

The first lecture was even more terrifying than I thought possible. I was not allowed to just enter the lecture room, but was marched there by the most magnificent beadle, all dressed in a light blue uniform, rather like the doorman at a very fancy hotel. He carried a huge mace as we proceeded to the lecture hall—I had the impression that I was marching in my own funeral procession. We went to the podium where I sat next to Gyp Wells, who introduced me. The large lecture hall was full, and in the front were people well known to me and others whom I had just met. In the front row I could see a star among neurobiologists, J. Z. Young, and not far from him sat the famous geneticist, J. B. S. Haldane, who positively glowered at me. How I got through the lecture I will never know. Just afterward I rushed to the Gents, and as I was washing my hands, Haldane, behind me, said in his booming voice, "Bonner, we don't make jokes in our lectures in this country." This did nothing to calm me down, but I did manage to say, "Those weren't jokes; I was just nervous."

I had no idea how the first lecture was received. Walking down the street the next day I ran into J. Z. Young, who greeted me with his charming smile as he said, "Well, John, what did you think of your lecture?" I always thought that was a splendid ploy. Later one evening we drank beer in a series of pubs, and while he never said so, he made me feel that my lectures were not a disaster.

The same was true for Haldane, who insisted I come to dinner with him and his wife, Helen Spurway. They both loved to shock and they loved to argue. Helen had just been arrested for a misdemeanor involving someone else's dog. I forget the details, but it was in all the newspapers, and she was reveling in it and the principle she upheld, which I have since forgotten. We ate at a small restaurant in Soho and soon were embroiled in some very spirited arguments. One was about some biological aspect of sex. Mostly they argued with each other, and both of them had very penetrating voices as they became more intense, resulting in all the people at the neighboring tables staring at us. Even though they both appeared to ignore the stir they were causing, I could not help feeling they not only were aware of it, but enjoyed seeing the shock waves travel across the room.

By the time we left the restaurant, we were on to discussing the recent work in animal behavior and its evolutionary implications. It was a subject of concern to all three of us, and indeed it was the central theme of one of my lectures, in which I drew parallels between behavior and development. We all had more to say, so they said they would walk me to Portland Place, but we still had not finished, so I walked them back toward University College. The whole process repeated itself again before we were ready for bed. On one of the laps we passed the BBC building, and on the ground floor a low window was open at the top, and one could hear a radio blaring away. Haldane was talking, and suddenly he veered across the broad sidewalk, stood on his toes, shoved his enormous head into the open window, and yelled with tremendous force, "SHUT UP." He went directly on to his next sentence as he cruised back alongside us without skipping a beat. Apparently he did not like the BBC! And I always wondered what might have been the sensations of the people working in the room.

As a result of that evening and some subsequent meetings during my visit, we began a sporadic correspondence. It was mainly from India, where he and Helen Spurway went to live in 1957. He seemed to enjoy living in India, although he could be as difficult with his new Indian friends as he was with the people he left. I asked him once why he had left Britain, and he said, looking at me as though I did not exist, "Because there are too many damned Americans here, especially damned American soldiers." There probably were, but I don't think that was the reason at all: I think there was quite a bit of the Hindu Brahman in his nature, and he found some peace there for his turbulent mind.

I still have our letters, which span the years from 1959 to 1962. As I reread them I am impressed all over again with how fertile his mind was. He could look at any biological problem with fresh and ingenious insights. He was also not encumbered with a need to flatter. In the early 1960s I had sent him The Ideas of Biology, a book that I had written for the layman. Here are some fragments of his replies:

15 November 1960 Dear Bonner,

...You ask about Helen and me coming to Princeton. This is at present impossible for me. I was asked by your government to give a list of all associations to which I have belonged since my 16th birthday (in 1908) with date of joining and leaving, with a threat of jail or fine if I get one wrong. I don't know if I joined the Oxford University Liberal Club in 1912 or 1913. Having a professional regard for truth I am not going to guess. If President Kennedy has the guts to tear down this Iron Curtain I will come when next asked, if I can manage. But I think there are too many officials who have a vested interest in that sort of nonsense.

So you had better come here. There are plenty of molds, especially in the monsoon...

14 February 1962 Dear Bonner,

...Every 15 years or so I write a paranoiac paper. In 1919 I gave the dimensions of a gene, and several other things about genes, not wholly wrong, on very inadequate evidence. In 1928 I gave the general accepted theory of the anaerobic origin of life. I hope Nagy has bust it. In 1944 I produced a cosmological speculation which nobody likes, not even myself. Perhaps it is right...

25 September 1962 Dear Bonner,

Thank you for "The ideas of biology." I have not yet read it, but my first impression is that you have made a number of statements, sometimes for the first time, sufficiently clearly to allow destructive criticism. For example on p. 29...[then he makes five detailed points, all excellent, the last one regarding page 152—the book is only a little over 200 pages!].

Anyway the book is provocative, probably more so than you meant it to be...

I kept wondering what he might have said had he admitted to reading the book!

After giving those 1956 lectures, I received an invitation to spend the weekend with Victor Rothschild, whom I knew slightly, and his family in Cambridge. It was the first time I had seen Cambridge, and I was quite bowled over by its beauty. Both Victor and his wife Tess could not have been kinder, and I had a wonderful time. I had sent the manuscript of my lectures to the Cambridge University Press previously, and they had given me a very discouraging reply. Victor asked about it, and I told him the details. He got up and said wait a bit, then disappeared into his study. I could hear him distantly on the telephone, and he came back to say that it was all settled: They would publish my book! Victor had not even read it—What could he have possibly said over the telephone, and to whom? Of course I never knew, but they did publish The Evolution of Development (1958). Since then, I have always wished that whenever I finish a book, there would be a Lord Rothschild about to speed it on its way.

Even my departure from London after those whirlwind two weeks was an event. On the night I left, the mother of my friends who had stayed with us during the war invited me to a family dinner. She was a celebrated cook and that evening she outdid herself: The food and the wine were a dream. I kept worrying about catching the plane, as I always do, but her son Justin said he would drive me out in plenty of time. We started very late, and by the time we got there almost everyone had boarded. All the regular seats were filled, so they had to put me in First Class. One of the other passengers was the incomparable opera diva Maria Callas, in her splendid elegance. The flight attendant came to me and said that having been upped into First Class, I was to have a steak dinner with champagne. I explained to her that I had just come from a sumptuous dinner and could not do it. She was very upset because I was passing up this chance to have a fantastic meal—and free too! I rode home among the clouds.

	BIBLIOGRAPHY

TOP BIBLIOGRAPHY

About J. B. S. HALDANE:

CLARK, R. W., 1969 JBS: The Life and Work of J. B. S. Haldane. Coward-McCann, New York.

CROW, J. F., 1992 Centennial: J. B. S. HALDANE, 1892–1964. Genetics 130: 1–6.

DRONAMRAJU, K. R., 1985 Haldane: The Life and Work of J. B. S. Haldane with Special Reference to India. Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen, Scotland.

NANJUNDIAH, V., 1992 J. B. S. Haldane: his life and science. Curr. Sci. 63: 582–588.

About or by others:

MEDAWAR, P., 1986 Memoir of a Thinking Radish: An Autobiography. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

ROTHSCHILD, V., 1956 Fertilization. Methuen, London.

WELLS, H. G., J. S. HUXLEY and G. P. WELLS, 1931 The Science of Life. Doubleday-Doran, New York.

YOUNG, J. Z., 1950 The Life of Vertebrates. Clarenden Press, Oxford.

References to my own writings:

BONNER, J. T., 1952 Morphogenesis: An Essay on Development. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

BONNER, J. T., 1958 The Evolution of Development. Cambridge University, Cambridge.

BONNER, J. T., 1962 The Ideas of Biology. Harper & Brothers, New York.

	FOOTNOTES

¹ A course of lectures at University College in London, 1956.