J. B. S. Haldane

    As commonly done, we will omit the spaces between the initials when we refer to J. B. S. Haldane in this article.

Referred to by most as J. B. S. Haldane (or J.B.S. Haldane), the initials stand for John Burdon Sanderson ('Burdon Sanderson' from his maternal line), born in Oxford, England, in 1892, his father an accomplished and honored (respiratory) physiologist, John Scott Haldane (J. S. Haldane), with whom J.B.S. worked as an assistant during childhood. Educated at Eaton and Oxford Colleges, receiving his undergraduate degree in 1914, served in World War I, and later teaching and doing research at Oxford, Cambridge, and London universities and the University of California at Berkeley. In 1932 J.B.S. Haldane published The Causes of Evolution, a founding document in the modern evolutionary synthesis of population genetics, reflecting the interest he pursued in college in biology, genetics and applying mathematics to questions in biology and genetics.

This article will give a summary of J.B.S. Haldane's life and thinking, his contributions to science and to the popularization of science, his impact on his times, and his vision of the future. One science historian, Mark B. Adams, sets the task:

J.B.S. Haldane (1892-1964) is one of the most fascinating, perplexing and troublesome figures in the history of science. That he was a major biologist of his time goes without saying, but attempts at further scientific classification are futile: there is hardly a field of modern biology in whose history he does not deserve at least some mention. And, beyond biology proper, Haldane had yet other personae that at times seemed no less central to his career. Any attempt to come to terms with his life and work must face the dual challenge of his extraordinary multiformity and his utter singularity.

Childhood and Adolescence

As a child J.B.S. Haldane learned much of his father's 'trade', human physiology, essentially as an non-indentured apprentice. By age fourteen years, having started at age 8 years, he had apparently learned about gases and human respiratory physiology, learned mathematical applications for interpreting experimental data, and from discussions with his father, learned about presenting research results for publication, and developing lecture courses. (For more on J.B.S. Haldane's father's life and scientific work, see)  J.B.S. Haldane had a head start in science and scientific thinking, leading him in school to switch from studying Latin and Greek to studying physics, chemistry and biology — and history..

In studying chemistry in school, he reportedly had learned about advances in chemical knowledge that helped his father and colleague, C. G. Douglas, in their research. His first scientific paper, at age seventeen years, co-authored with his father and his colleague, was read to the Physiological Society, likely what appeared in the Journal of Physiology in 1912, as Douglas CG, Haldane JS, Haldane JB. (1912) The laws of combination of haemoglobin with carbon monoxide and oxygen. J. Physiol 44:275-304.  It reflected physiology at the mathematical and chemical level. J.B.S. Haldane had achieved credentials as a scientist before age twenty years.

Scientific contributions

Haldane applied his passion for mathematical applications to biology in the field of enzymology, the study of the protein catalysts that accelerate biochemical in living cells.

In 1925, GE Briggs and Haldane derived a new interpretation of the enzyme kinetics law described by Victor Henri in 1903, different from the 1913 Michaelis-Menten equation. Leonor Michaelis and Maud Menten assumed that enzyme (catalyst) and substrate (reactant) are in fast equilibrium with their complex, which then dissociates to yield product and free enzyme. The Briggs-Haldane equation was of the same algebraic form, but their derivation is based on the quasi steady state approximation, that is the concentration(s) of intermediate complex(es) do(es) not change. As a result, the microscopic meaning of the "Michaelis Constant" (km) is different. Although commonly referring it as Michaelis-Menten kinetics, most of the current models actually use the Briggs-Haldane derivation.