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. 71 Bythe spring of 1928, Carson displayed little of her earlier anxiety about thedecision to pursue science. I think it is such fun to be majoring in Science!she explained,  I don t see why I ever hesitated about it. 72 In 1929, shegraduated near the top of her class, with the intent of being not a writer or anaturalist but a professional biologist.After her Woods Hole summer, Carson moved from the tiny PennsylvaniaCollege for Women to Baltimore to begin graduate study at Johns HopkinsUniversity.As the largest and most established graduate program in Ameri-can natural science, Johns Hopkins had already produced many of theleading figures in the field.Founded in the 1870s, the university, a novelexperiment in American education, brought the German research ideal tothe United States.What became known as the  Baltimore method  in-struction anchored in laboratory work served as a pedagogical model forother elite universities such as Cornell, Harvard, Clark, and Chicago.The creation of the Hopkins biology department stands as a perfectillustration of the school s devotion to laboratory experimentation.In Balti-more, biology was important from the beginning.University PresidentDaniel Coit Gilman, one of Clarence King s former Yale professors, an-nounced in his inaugural address,  In our scheme of a university, greatprominence should be given to the studies which bear upon Life, thegroup now called Biological Sciences. 73 Gilman made good on that prom-ise when he hired the department s first professor, Henry Newell Martin, anEnglish physiologist trained by Thomas H.Huxley.As expected, Martinoriented the curriculum  toward graduate instruction and researchin order to prepare students for  increased specialization and an apprecia-tion for pure investigation. 74Martin s approach to biology emphasized anatomy and histology, and hisresearch studies included investigations of the mammalian heart and respi-ratory system.It was how he applied this work that led to his Hopkinsappointment.The Baltimore merchant who endowed the university alsoprovided funds to build a hospital and, eventually, a medical school.As aTHE BIOLOGICAL CENTURY 157physiologist, Martin was expected to provide students with a biologicalfoundation for careers in scientific medicine.Financial problems, however,delayed the construction of the hospital, and while administrators scrambledfor construction funds, Martin expanded the scope and mission of his depart-ment.In 1876, American morphologist William Keith Brooks joined Martinon the Hopkins faculty and would remain a major force in American biologyuntil his death more than thirty years later.Trained by Louis Agassiz atHarvard, Brooks arrived in Baltimore with an interest in the embryonicdevelopment of marine life, especially mollusks.One of the first morphologiststo accept Darwinian evolution, Brooks used the examination of embryoniccells to reveal organism development and descent.This research, and thedevelopment of Johns Hopkins biology,  coincided with a multifaceted move-ment toward a new view of the natural world and a new approach to studyit. 75 Both Martin s and Brooks s embrace of lab work was more than arejection of an older natural history tradition of observation.76 Questions offunction, structure, and purpose informed their research as biology movedfrom surveying nature s design to investigating nature s mechanisms toexplain behavior.The impact of Martin and Brooks on American biologywas impressive.Martin s career was cut short by health problems, but Brooksduring his long tenure trained more than forty doctoral students, includingthe future luminaries Edwin Grant Conklin, Ross Granville Harper, ThomasHunt Morgan, and Edmund Beecher Wilson.When Carson arrived on campus, Brooks s legacy continued to influenceJohns Hopkins biology, but Carson s experiences were more directly affectedby Brooks s successor, Herbert Spencer Jennings.The Harvard-trained Jen-nings pioneered research in  holistic materialism, a complex and antide-terministic effort to explain organisms interactions with theirenvironments.He established his scientific reputation with the study ofprotozoan life cycles, published as Behavior of the Lower Organisms in1906.Biology s  big questions dominated his work [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]