The Man Who Invented the Chromosome: A Life of Cyril Darlington Oren Solomon Harman

Born by mistake, or connivance, to struggling parents in a small Lancashire cotton town in 1903, an uninspired Cyril Darlington escaped the obscurity of farming life and rose, against all odds, to become the world's greatest expert on chromosomes and one of the most penetrating biological thinkers of the twentieth century. Harman follows Darlington's path from bleak prospects to world fame, showing how, within the most miniscule of worlds, he sought answers to the biggest questions -how species originate, how variations occurs, how Nature, both blind and foreboding, random and insightful, makes her way from deep past to unknown future. But Darlington did not stop there: Chromosomes held within their tiny confines untold, dark truths about man and his culture. This passionate conviction led the once famed Darlington down a path of rebuke, isolation, and finally obscurity. Harman unfolds Darlington's forgotten tale amid the major events of the twentieth century - the Nazi atrocities, the Cold War, the crackpot Lysenko, the molecular revolution, eugenics, Civil Rights, the welfare state, the changing views of man's place in nature, and biological determinism. Just as Darlington's work provoked him to ask questions about the link between biology and culture, the story of his life raises fundamental questions about the link between science and society. Oren Solomon Harman is Lady Davis Fellow at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Lecturer at Bar-Ilan University.