Читать книгу How to Construct Your Intellectual Pedigree - Elof Axel Carlson - Страница 10

3How to Prepare Your Academic Pedigree

It is easiest to do this in stages. The first stage is getting the chronological sequence. Place the name of each person, the years of birth and death and places where they were born and died.

Thus:Hermann Joseph Muller (1890–1967)

b. New York City, NY; d. Indianapolis, IN.

Most of the names will be available from Wikipedia when you use a computer search engine like Google. Most of the Wikipedia entries for scientists have a box in the upper right with a photograph and a summary of significant facts (birth, death, parents, education, mentor, and students). The most significant mentor in a scientist’s life is usually his or her mentor for a PhD or MD. The information you are seeking has a high probability of being found in Wikipedia. If not, check the other options the Google search list provides. This may be obituaries, retirement tributes, or encyclopedia entries (especially from the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica). For American scientists, there is usually an extensive obituary from the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences which is free to access on the web and read. For information on older scientists, I recommend using the Dictionary of Scientific Biography.¹

I take notes for the page devoted to a scientist I wish to follow. This includes aspects of his or her career, significant contributions to science, and interesting items about coping with reverses, injuries, political or religious clashes, or little-known facts. Often key persons other than the PhD mentor are mentioned and these can be branches of the pedigree for that scientist.

After amassing the facts from reading the Google search, I choose a suitable portrait (if there is one). I recommend you do it yourself (or with your academic mentor) and that way you can quickly find what you want in your first search.

Writing My Own Entry

In this entry I use the first person. When Mendel applied for a position as a teacher, he submitted his biography in the third person. If I were preparing this for a student I had mentored, I would use the third person. I would also use the third person if I wanted to hang a copy on the wall of my office or study. If I were giving this pedigree to my family members, I would use the first person for my own entry. Most of the 60 or so pedigrees I have done involve about 15 to 20 entries to go back to the Renaissance. These can be entered in a notebook on one page and later be put on to 3 × 5 index cards with notes on the person’s life.

First-person Narrative for Elof Axel Carlson

Elof Axel Carlson — I am a geneticist and historian of science with a love for teaching and scholarship. I was born in Brooklyn, NY on July 15, 1931. My father was from Stockholm, Sweden. My mother was from Bound Brook, New Jersey. As a teacher I am aware of the rippling effects of lectures, conversations during office visits, and discussions both casual and formal in laboratories. In my own life I was influenced by my father, Axel Elof Carlson an elevator operator who had a passion for reading and whose library was a source of constant surprises as I browsed through the books growing up. My mother was the first child of immigrant parents from Ternopil, in present day Ukraine. I was influenced by many of my school teachers, especially in Grades 7 to 12 (junior high school and high school). The most significant of these teachers was Morris Gabriel Cohen at Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, NY. I read aloud to him from the classics over a period of five years, meeting him for an hour about 7 a.m. five days a week while school was in session. I attended NYU on a scholarship, and majored in biology and minored in history. I was accepted to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where I studied genetics with Nobelist H. J. Muller. I have had the pleasure of supervising the PhD dissertations of six students (and seeing 13 of my books published). My most noted books are The Gene: A Critical History (1966), Genes, Radiation, and Society: The Life and Work of H. J. Muller (1981), The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (2001), and Mendel’s Legacy: The Origins of Classical Genetics (2007). My PhD was on the structure and mutability of the dumpy gene in fruit flies. My laboratory research involved comparative genetics, gene structure, and mosaicism. I applied my work on mosaicism to medical genetics using retinoblastoma as an example. I have published articles on gene structure, chemical mutagenesis, and human genetics. I taught at Queen’s University in Canada (Queen’s University), at UCLA, and at Stony Brook University before retiring with my wife, Nedra, in Bloomington, Indiana.

Third-person Narrative

Elof Axel Carlson — is a geneticist and historian of science with interests in teaching and scholarship. He was born in Brooklyn, NY, on July 15, 1931. His father was from Stockholm, Sweden; and his mother was from Bound Brook, New Jersey. As a teacher, he was aware of the influences of rippling effects of lectures, conversations during office visits, and discussions both casual and formal in laboratories. He was influenced by his father, Axel Elof Carlson, an elevator operator who had a passion for reading and whose library was a source of constant surprises as his two children browsed through the books growing up. His mother was the first child of immigrant parents from Ternopil, in present day Ukraine. He was influenced by many of his school teachers, especially in Grades 7 to 12 (junior high school and high school). The most significant of these teachers was Morris Gabriel Cohen (1900–1975) at Thomas Jefferson HS in Brooklyn, NY. Carlson read aloud to him from the classics over a period of five years, meeting him for an hour about 7 a.m. five days a week while school was in session. Carlson attended NYU on a scholarship, and majored in biology and minored in history. He was accepted to Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, where he studied genetics with Nobelist H. J. Muller. He supervised the PhD dissertations of six students (and seeing 13 of his books published). His most noted books are The Gene: A Critical History (1966), Genes, Radiation, and Society: The Life and Work of H. J. Muller (1981), The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (2001), and Mendel’s Legacy: The Origins of Classical Genetics (2007). Carlson’s PhD was on the structure and mutability of the dumpy gene in fruit flies. His laboratory research involved comparative genetics, gene structure, and mosaicism. He applied his work on mosaicism to medical genetics using retinoblastoma as an example. He published articles on gene structure, chemical mutagenesis, and human genetics. He taught at Queen’s University in Canada, at UCLA, and at Stony Brook University before retiring with his wife, Nedra, in Bloomington, Indiana.

Comment on First- or Third-person Usage

Note that the first-person account gives a more intimate feeling about the writer although none of the facts have changed. Third-person usage objectifies the writer. First-person accounts are usually associated with informal correspondence. A major use of first-person accounts are applications for admission to college or graduate programs or application to admission to medical school. Medicine is both an art and science. Good medical practitioners need to relate to patients and that helps patients follow the health advice given by physicians. The first-person narrative often conveys this empathy. The CV or curriculum vitae is usually written in the third person and is used for job hiring and promotions or when applying for grants. It is usually structured when there are competitive positions and thus the term “fill out a CV” is more often used than “compose a CV.” If it is composed, it is more often associated with activities like submitting a book manuscript or prospectus for publication.

In my own academic pedigree, I have chosen to include my high school mentor, Morris Gabriel Cohen because of the profound influence he had on my early education. I had many other mentors as an undergraduate at NYU and as a graduate student at Indiana University. This is probably true for most of the persons whose pedigrees are described. If all mentoring were included, the pedigree would resemble a bush more than a tree. Thus, I chose to use Morgan’s academic mentors at Johns Hopkins, H. Newell Martin and William Keith Brooks. I did not include his European mentors when he went abroad for a year after getting his PhD. There he formed a lifelong friendship with Hans Driesch and absorbed much of the German advances in experimental embryology. He also found a visit to Hugo de Vries’ garden a stimulus for starting his own studies of mutation.

Note

1.Gillispie Charles C. (editor) (1970–1980) Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 16 volumes. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York.