Picard Jean-François

Bio: Picard Jean-François is an academic researcher. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 23 citations.

Introduction: have we ever been 'transnational'? Towards a history of science across and beyond borders

Abstract: In recent years, historians have debated the prospect of offering new ‘transnational’ or ‘global’ perspectives in their studies. This paper introduces the reader to this special issue by analysing characteristics, merits and flaws of these approaches. It then considers how historians of science have practised transnational history without, however, paying sufficient attention to the theoretical foundations of this approach. Its final part illustrates what benefits may derive from the application of transnational history in the field. In particular, we suggest looking at the construction of transnational networks in science, and discuss some of the methodological consequences of adopting this approach.

Ephestia: The Experimental Design of Alfred Kühn's Physiological Developmental Genetics

Abstract: Much of the early history of developmental and physiological genetics in Germany remains to be written. Together with Carl Correns and Richard Goldschmidt, Alfred Kuhn occupies a special place in this history. Trained as a zoologist in Freiburg im Breisgau, he set out to integrate physiology, development and genetics in a particular experimental system based on the flour moth Ephestia kuhniella Zeller. This paper is meant to reconstruct the crucial steps in the experimental pathway that led Kuhn and his collaborators at the University of Gottingen, and later at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes of Biology and Biochemistry in Berlin, to formulate, in their specific way, what later became known as the “one gene – one enzyme hypothesis.” Special attention will be given to the interaction of the different parts of Kuhn's Ephestia-based project, which were rooted in different research traditions. The paper retraces how, roughly between 1925 and 1945, these elements came to form a mixed experimental set-up composed of genetic, embryological, physiological and, finally, biochemical constituents. Accordingly, emphasis is laid on the development of the terminology in which the results were cast, and how it reflected the hybrid state of an experimental system successively acquiring new epistemic layers.

The Rockefeller Foundation and the rise of molecular biology.

Abstract: The Rockefeller Foundation began to support a systematic transfer of physico-chemical technology to experimental biology in the early 1930s. A close look at three key projects in the United Kingdom shows the impact and limits of private philanthropy on scientific innovation.