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WILLIAM C. SUMMERS

"History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed." This famous statement by the Scientist/Philosopher Thomas Kuhn ( in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions) suggests that science, both in terms of public understanding and in terms of more rewarding and efficient practice, benefits from a sophisticated and nuanced study of its history. My research builds on a career of 4 decades of laboratory work as well as in-depth applications of the craft of the historian of science and the perspective of the philosopher of science. I am currently engaged in two book-length projects.

History of molecular biology
The early history of molecular biology is embedded in the work of physicists who applied concepts from physics to biological systems. One major aspect of this early work was the development of the target theory. The detailed history of the origins of the target theory has been reconstructed from the published literature and from archival material. The next phase of this project will examine the formation and influences of the American Phage Group. This material will form some of the background against which the larger history of molecular biology will be placed.

History of the Manchurian Plague, 1910-1911
Beginning in October 1910, a major epidemic of pneumonic plague swept through Manchuria and by the spring of 1911 had killed between 45,000 60,000 people. The plague and its aftermath were to play an important role in the geopolitical events leading up to the Japanese takeover of Manchuria and complex causes of World War II. The concentrated force of this epidemic, its near 100 percent mortality rate, and its occurrence in a region of international competition and diplomatic struggle all contributed to the importance and interest in the Manchurian plague. The "Manchurian Question" was of immense interest in the United States: America had just enjoyed its first taste of successful international leadership upon Roosevelt's brokering the peace treaty of 1905 that ended the Russo Japanese war over territorial rights in Manchuria. Russia, on the other hand was intent on retaining what she could of her centuries old foothold in East Asia. Japan, modernizing after the Meiji restoration in 1868, was experiencing international ambitions and expansionism in Korea and Manchuria, in its own version of "manifest destiny." China, under the yoke of war reparations owed to both the Western Powers and to Japan as the result of the ill-fated Boxer Rebellion in 1895, was struggling with its first efforts at modernization while still governed by the decaying and increasingly ineffective Qing dynasty. This project aims to elucidate the multiple uses which was made of the plague to exhibit the importance of epidemic disease in geopolitics.

Selected Publications
Summers, W. C., Felix d'Herelle and the Origins of Molecular Biology.
New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1999

Summers, W. C., Manchurian Plague: medicine and politics, East and West.
Harvard Asia-Pacific Review 6, 10- 13 (2002)

Summers, W. C., From enzyme adaptation to gene regulation. Adv. Appl. Microbiol. 52,159-166 (2003)

Summers, W. C., Phage and the early development of molecular biology.
In: Calendar, R., ed. The Bacteriophages. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006

Summers, W. C., ed., Reconceiving the Gene: Seymour Benzer's Adventures in Phage Genetics. By F.L. Holmes. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2006

Last Updated 12-18-06