(NAS Colloquium) Genetics and the Origin of Species: From Darwin to Molecular Biology 60 Years After Dobzhansky

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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

followed Morgan to the California Institute of Technology, where Dobzhansky was appointed assistant professor of genetics in 1929, and professor of genetics in 1936. In 1940 he returned to New York as professor of zoology at Columbia University, where he remained until 1962, when he became professor at the Rockefeller Institute (renamed Rockefeller University in 1965) also in New York City. On July 1, 1970. Dobzhansky became professor emeritus at Rockefeller University; in September 1971, he moved to the Department of Genetics at the University of California, Davis, where he was adjunct professor until his death in 1975.

On August 8, 1924, Dobzhansky married Natalia (Natasha) Sivertzev, a geneticist in her own right, who was at the time working with the famous Russian biologist I.I.Schmalhausen In Kiev. Natasha was Dobzhansky’s faithful companion and occasional scientific collaborator until her death from coronary thrombosis on February 22, 1969. The Dobzhanskys had only one child, Sophie, married until her recent death to Michael D.Coe, professor of anthropology at Yale University.

In a routine medical check-up on June 1, 1968, it was discovered that Dobzhansky suffered from chronic lymphatic leukemia, the least malignant form of leukemia. He was given a prognosis of “a few months to a few years” of life expectancy. Over the following 7 years, the progress of the leukemia was unexpectedly slow and, surprising to his physicians, it had little if any noticeable effect on his energy and work habits. However, the disease took a conspicuous turn for the worse in the summer of 1975. In mid-November Dobzhansky started to receive chemotherapy, but continued living at home and working at the laboratory. He was convinced that the end of his life was near and dreaded that he might become unable to work and to care for himself. This never came to pass. He died of heart failure on the morning of December 18, 1975. The previous day, he had been working in the laboratory.

Dobzhansky was an excellent teacher and distinguished educator of scientists. Throughout his academic career he had more than 30 graduate students and an even greater number of postdoctoral and visiting associates, many of them from foreign countries. Some of the most distinguished geneticists and evolutionists in the United States and abroad are his former students. Dobzhansky spent long periods of time in foreign academic institutions, and was largely responsible for the establishment or development of genetics and evolutionary biology in various countries, notably Brazil, Chile, and Egypt.

Dobzhansky gave generously of his time to other scientists, particularly to young ones and to students. But he resented time spent in committee activities, which he shunned as often as he reasonably could. Throughout his academic career, he avoided, administrative posts, alleging, perhaps correctly, that he had neither temperament nor ability for management. Most certainly, he preferred to dedicate his working time to research and writing rather than to administration.

Dobzhansky was a world traveler and an accomplished linguist able to speak fluently six languages and to read several more. He was a good naturalist and never lacked time for a hike in the California Sierras, the New England forests, or the Amazon jungles. He loved horseback riding but practiced no other sports. Dobzhansky’s interests included the visual arts, music, history, Russian literature, cultural anthropology, philosophy, religion, and, of course, science. His artistic preferences were unsystematic and definitely traditional. His favorite composer was Beethoven followed by Bach and other baroques; he loved Italian operas, but had little appreciation for most twentieth century music and a definite distaste for atonalism. (Of electronic and computer-composed music, he said that it is fit only for computers to listen to it.) In art, Dobzhansky admired the Italian Renaissance painters as well as the Dutch and Spanish masters of the seventeenth century; he appreciated the French Impressionists but detested cubism and all subsequent styles and schools of modern art.

Dobzhansky’s obvious personality traits were magnanimity and expansiveness. He recognized and generously praised the achievements of other scientists; he admired the intellect of his colleagues, even when admiration was alloyed with disagreement. He made many long-lasting friendships, usually started by professional interaction. Many of Dobzhansky’s friends were scientists younger than himself, who either had worked in his laboratory as students, postdoctorals, or visitors, or had met him during his travels. He was conspicuously affectionate and loyal toward his friends; he expected affection and loyalty in return. Dobzhansky’s exuberant personality was manifest not only in his friendships but also in his antipathies, which he was seldom able, or willing, to hide.

Dobzhansky was a religious man, although he apparently rejected fundamental beliefs of traditional religion, such as the existence of a personal God and of life beyond physical death. His religiosity was grounded on the conviction that there is meaning in the universe. He saw that meaning in the fact that evolution has produced the stupendous diversity of the living world and has progressed from primitive forms of life to mankind. Dobzhansky held that, in man, biological evolution has transcended itself into the realm of self-awareness and culture. He believed that somehow mankind would eventually evolve into higher levels of harmony and creativity. He was a metaphysical optimist.

Dobzhansky’s prodigious scientific productivity was made possible by incredible energy and very disciplined work habits. His enormous success as the creator of new ideas and as a synthesizer was, at least in part, based on his broad knowledge, phenomenal memory, and an incisive mind able to see the relevance that a new discovery or a new theory might have with respect to other theories or problems. His success as an experimentalist depended on a wise blending of field and laboratory research; whenever possible he combined both in the study of a problem, often using laboratory studies to ascertain or to confirm the causal processes involved in the phenomena discovered in nature. He obtained the collaboration of mathematicians to design theoretical models for experimental testing and to analyze statistically his empirical observations. He was no inventor or gadgeteer, but he had an uncanny ability to exploit the possibilities of any suitable experimental apparatus or experimental method.

Dobzhansky received many honors and awards. He was president of several professional organizations, including the Genetics Society of America (1941), the American Society of Naturalists (1950), the Society for the Study of Evolution (1951), the American Society of Zoologists (1963), the American Teilhard de Chardin Association (1969), and the Behavior Genetics Association (1973). He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and of many foreign academies, such as the Royal Society of London. He received more than 20 honorary degrees from universities in the United States and abroad. He received the Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal (1946) and the Kimber Genetics Award (1958) from the National Academy of Sciences and numerous other medals, including the National Medal of Science, which he received in January 1964 from President Lyndon Baines Johnson (16, 17).

The 16 papers that follow were presented at a colloquium sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the publication of Dobzhansky’s Genetics and the Origin of Species. These papers are organized into four successive sections: Genetic Variation and Its Origins, Adaptation and Natural Selection, Population Differentiation and Speciation, and Patterns of Evolution.

Genetic Variation and Its Origins

In 1937, when Dobzhansky published Genetics and the Origin of Species (1), the DNA structure was not yet discovered, nor

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