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Judith
Ann Schiff is Chief Research Archivist at the Yale University Library.
Previous
Columns
December
2001 The many lives of the Governor Ingersoll house.
November
2001 Henry Parks Wright, the first dean of the College.
October
2001 James Hillhouse, the first master of bringing together
town and gown.
Summer
2001 The ironic history of Woodbridge Hall.
May
2001 Beatrix Farrand: landscaper to Yale.
April
2001 Yale's golf course turns 75.
February
2001 Connecticut Hall has housed patriots and physicists.
December
2000 Basketball may owe the five-man team to Yale.
November
2000 The
University's current investment in science can be traced in
part to the influence of Benjamin Silliman, Class of 1796,
who became known as the father of American scientific education.
October
2000 The year 2000 presidential election is not the first
to feature a Y-H-P rivalry.
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Old Yale
An Unsung Hero of Medical Research
A
technique invented nearly 100 years ago by a Yale scientist led
to a revolution in biology.
February
2002
by Judith Ann Schiff
Early
in the 20th century, a shy and self-effacing Yale professor of anatomy
named Ross Granville Harrison discovered a way to grow cells outside
the body. At the time, "tissue culture" was a curiosity, but in
1998, historians of science Meyer Friedman and Gerald W. Friedland
named it one of "medicine's ten greatest discoveries."
Friedman
and Friedland placed Harrison in the company of nine other notables,
among them William Harvey, who discovered the nature of blood circulation,
and Edward Jenner, who pioneered an effective vaccine against smallpox.
Tissue culture has made possible the study of living organisms at
the cellular and molecular level and led to the development of modern
vaccines, and yet Harrison, once described by Fortune as
"America's most famous unknown scientist," remains so today.
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Ross
Granville Harrison, once described by Fortune as "America's
most famous unknown scientist," remains so today.
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However,
for most of the first half of the 20th century at Yale, Harrison
was an influential force in teaching and research. Some biology
had been taught as part of the undergraduate course in natural philosophy,
but in 1870 Yale's Sheffield
Scientific School began offering the "Biological Course," one
of the first premedical courses in the country. Yale College students
who planned to study medicine clamored for admission, and in 1888,
the Yale and Sheff faculties opened it to all students. This was
the first step toward uniting the schools.
By 1906
developments in biology and the need for improved facilities brought
them closer, and in 1907 the faculties jointly appointed Harrison
to a vacant Sheff professorship of comparative anatomy. President
Hadley lured the 37-year-old associate professor from Johns Hopkins
Medical School by offering him a full professorship and by promising
to create a separate zoology department in a new biological sciences
building.
When
he arrived, Harrison continued experiments begun at Johns Hopkins,
and from 1907 to 1910, he published the results of his invention
of tissue culture methodology. He also directed the building of
the Osborn Memorial Laboratories which, when completed in 1913,
was the finest facility of its type. There Harrison used tissue-culture
techniques in his research on the amphibian embryo and served as
"Chief" and mentor to generations of students and followers who
credited him with initiating the modern analysis of vertebrate development.
Twice
Harrison was seriously considered for the Nobel Prize. In 1917 the
Nobel committee recommended him for science's greatest honor, but
due to the World War, a prize was not awarded in his field. In 1933
he was one of two finalists, but because the full value of tissue
culture was not yet appreciated, the Nobel went to geneticist Thomas
Hunt Morgan.
After
retiring in 1938 as Sterling Professor
of Biology, Harrison headed the National Research Council, transforming
it during World War II into a strong force for the development of
modern medical science. In that position, he helped bring together
American chemists and the British discoverers of penicillin to dramatically
speed up production of the antibiotic.
One of
the most important uses of Harrison's methodology was initiated
by John F. Enders, who found a way to grow poliomyelitis virus in
tissue culture. In 1954, when Enders and his assistants received
the Nobel for discoveries leading to the polio vaccine, Harrison
rejoiced that his 1907 observation had led to this success.
At Yale,
the scientist is remembered through a professorship established
in his honor in 1947; Mark Mooseker is currently the Ross Granville
Harrison Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology.
After
Harrison's death in 1959, professor John S. Nicholas wrote in tribute:
"It is seldom that one man can attain such true greatness. His contribution
to biological thought is equivalent to that of Einstein or Planck
in other branches of science."
Related article:
"Serious
About the Sciences"
By Bruce Fellman
May 2000
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