J. B. S. Haldane

J. B. S. Haldane (1892-1964), British geneticist, who led the way to establishing mathematically the rates of genetic changes in human populations. John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was born in Oxford, England. The son of John Scott Haldane, the noted respiratory physiologist, he attended Eton and the University of Oxford. At the University of Cambridge (1922-33) he formulated a mathematical approach to the understanding of natural selection. His interest in human genetics led him to work on hemophilia and color blindness in order to establish rates at which mutations occur in human populations.

Haldane applied vast analytical and literary skills to the controversies of his day, becoming a Marxist in the 1930s and then disputing the official party line that endorsed the ideas of the Soviet agronomist T. D. Lysenko. He was a forceful personality, and his writings were followed closely by both general and specialized readers. His works include The Inequality of Man (1932), The Causes of Evolution (1933), Heredity and Politics (1938), The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences (1939), New Paths in Genetics (1941), and The Biochemistry of Genetics (1954).