Biographical Memoirs Volume 47 (1975) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
5 Herbert Spencer Jennings
5 Herbert Spencer Jennings
Pages 142-223
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 143... ...
M SONNEBORN HERBERT SPENCER JENNINGS was widely recognized and greatly respected not only as a pioneering biological investigator but also as a thinker, philosopher, and educator.
|
From page 144... ...
Tales of the successes of relatives and friends who had gone to the fertile and prospering Midwest led George at twenty to shake off the bonds of his hard life and try his fortune in northern Illinois. Working at first on farms, clerking, and teaching district school, he soon saved enough to set up his parents in Illinois and, soon after, to marry Olive Taft Jenks.
|
From page 145... ...
When she was a young woman, Olive became a district school teacher; her brother joined the Union Army. Both Olive and George, who married in 1856, were intensely religious.
|
From page 146... ...
Jennings was looked on as the village infidel, he was loved as a person and respected as a physician. While his father was at the height of his emotional and intellectual revolution and in the midst of his peak enthusiasm for books and the new literary society, his son, Herbert Spencer Jennings, was born and grew to the age of six.
|
From page 147... ...
Herbert's mother, extraordinarily devoted to her children and active in social service, took him regularly to the Baptist Church and Sunday School, much to his silent dissatisfaction. He was an excellent student at school and a studious, persistent reader at home; but he led a happy, sociable life with his "set," which consisted mostly of his cousins, entered vigorously into their games, and enjoyed fishing and other country pleasures.
|
From page 148... ...
In the spring of 1887, Herbert again tried teaching district
|
From page 149... ...
to get a post as teacher in one of the best district schools in the area, the Quaker District of Putnam County. This third attempt was completely different from his first two.
|
From page 150... ...
The technical absurdity of Herbert's position as Assistant Professor, although he had never attended college, and the failure of Brunk to have given the post to another man (to whom it was alleged to have been promised) were among the targets of the anti-Brunk faction.
|
From page 151... ...
At the end of the first semester my interest had become greatly taken up with scientific work—now for the first time properly carried on in my experience.... I decided to continue with it, although my interest in language
|
From page 152... ...
I was left again in the condition of suspense of judgment; the great questions were entirely reopened." After this first year at Michigan, Jennings's financial resources were exhausted. Very tired, he went home to Tonica for the summer to recoup his energy, playing croquet and not unmindful of feminine charms, especially those of Lulu Plant, who was then being courted by his brother George Darwin.
|
From page 153... ...
His own sensitive nature sought and was responsive to the sensitivity of fine women. The letters of this period to Eva reveal Jennings as far more mature than the five-year-younger writer of the high school essay.
|
From page 154... ...
This study, continued for several summers, led directly to several publications and indirectly to his thesis research on rotifer embryology at Harvard and later to studies on the behavior, fecundity, longevity, and genetics of rotifers. The initiation of the rotifer studies was suggested by Reighard, who had proposed to Jennings that he join him in a biological survey of these lakes, taking the Rotifera as his assignment.
|
From page 155... ...
H Huxley was his paragon of the many-sided neo-Renaissance man and greatly cheered his hopes of retaining and fostering his own bent towards many-sidedness while maintain" his enthusiasm for rotifers and their values for biological research.
|
From page 156... ...
At prestigious Harvard, he found none of the biologists to be "so all-around able" as Professor Reighard: "The more I see and hear of other people, the more I believe in Professor Reighard as an intellectual man." When the time came, as it would some years later, he was quite prepared to accept a position on the zoological faculty at Michigan with Reighard, who in the interim had become Director of the Laboratory ( 1895-1925~. It was not easy for Jennings to leave Ann Arbor after one year of graduate work.
|
From page 157... ...
Mark was agreeable. Jennings proceeded rapidly to an M.A.
|
From page 158... ...
There too he shared biological exploration, living quarters, and discussion with Castle, Davenport, Montgomery, Mayr, Goto, and an earnest bright, fine Harvard undergraduate from the Midwest, Walter Cannon. ~ennings's one venture into the high society of Newport found him, as he was long to remain in such circum
|
From page 159... ...
The tangible recognition represented by the fellowship raised his spirits and self-confidence. He admitted to a few intimates his feeling that he was beginning to be a master of biology and that he would be prepared to deserve and handle any available college position.
|
From page 160... ...
W Geiser preserved copies of many letters written to his father, his brother George, his sisters Aldie and Kate, a friend, Joseph Brennemann (his younger roommate at Michigan, who came from the countryside near Tonica and became a pediatrician)
|
From page 161... ...
He submitted his thesis to compete for the Walker Prizes of the Boston Society of Natural History and it won their first prize ($60~. He competed for Harvard's Parker Travelling Fellowship ($500)
|
From page 162... ...
To obtain understanding of the factors governing the movement of cells during early embryology, he imagined much might be learned by studying the factors governing the behavior of isolated cells, i.e., their reactions to stimuli. Verworn had been successfully studying the reactions of individual cells to such stimuli as the electric current; so Jennings proposed to extend these studies to other stimuli.
|
From page 163... ...
However, all I want to find out is what there is in all this 'reaction to stimuli,' etc.; I don't care how it turns out." The results of his work during the one semester at iena, as sole experimentalist in the laboratory, were written up and published as the first of a series of papers on "Studies of reactions to stimuli in unicellular organisms." He reported in this first paper the aggregation of paramecia in weak acids and the mechanism of this aggregation, their negative reaction to alkali, their nonreaction to certain chemicals and to osmotic pressure, the responses to certain combinations of stimuli, and many other basic observations. While in Jena, Jennings attended lectures by Verworn on general physiology, by Biedermann on human physiology, by Liebmann on psychology, and a few by Haeckel.
|
From page 164... ...
He wrote to his friend, Franl: Smith, who had been a colleague in the work of the biological survey and had settled into a good secure position at the University of Illinois, "Zoologists are getting terribly frequent nowadays and it makes me speculate about the future." The competition was getting rough. Visible men on the spot had a
|
From page 165... ...
But these were two courageous souls not to be long diverted or subdued by adversity. Not yet thirty, Jennings enjoyed excellent health and the character to make the most of his opportunities, however short of his desserts they might be.
|
From page 166... ...
are exactly the same." He described bacteriology, to which he came almost completely unprepared, as "a very interesting field and I'm glad to have a chance to work it up to some extent.... The whole year will be valuable to me—if only I can switch over into something else later." Indeed, time was to prove its value; it provided the foundation for Tennin~s's I_ ~ A O capacity to take the then unusual and important step of including unicellular plants and bacteria in his broad and comprehensive review, "Genetics of the Protozoa," which would be published thirty years later.
|
From page 167... ...
And on top of it all, he tried desperately to find some time to continue his behavior work on Paramecium: "My only chance now is not to let myself be entirely forgotten. Having gotten completely outside of real scientific circles and even out of zoology, I'm afraid it will be difficult to get back." If he did any research, it did not come to publication that year.
|
From page 168... ...
As he wrote, "Competition is fierce, and if I don't keep moving I am going to be left." He did move; no less than three research papers based on the work of those six weeks appeared in 1899. They were papers II, III, and IV in his series, "Studies on the reactions to stimuli in unicellular organisms." His work on Paramecium in Verworn's laboratory had shifted his focus from rotifers to Protozoa, from morphology and distribution to behavior; so during this summer at Put-in-Bay he concentrated on the Protozoa, which, in earlier years of the survey, had been assigned to others, first Frank Smith and later C
|
From page 169... ...
He prepared for publication papers based on the work of the summer and a more general summary paper, "The Psychology of a Protozoan," for a psychological journal. Viewing the reactions of Protozoa as "the beginnings of mind," he continued for years to call the attention of psychologists to his findings.
|
From page 170... ...
In 1918, Pearl followed Jennings to Johns Hopkins, but to a part of the university Eve miles distant—the new School of Hygiene and Public Health. Seven years later, when Jennings was trying to get support from the Rockefeller Foundation for work of his department, Pearl succeeded in obtaining from them magnificent support for five years to set up for himself at Johns Hopkins an independent Institute for Biological Research.
|
From page 171... ...
Financially strapped, he thought of trying to add to his income by writing a textbook on introductory biology and started work on it. At the end of the first year at Michigan, feeling relatively
|
From page 172... ...
C) — - - 7 ~ — t~ ~ _ ~ ~ A ~ ~ A ^ _ ~ r r ~ ^ ~ ~ ~ ~ At this time, Jennings encountered, and was long to be plagued by, opposition to his research claims, since his behavior work ran afoul of the views and reports of one of the foremost biologists in America—Jacques Loeb, and his student, Garrey.
|
From page 173... ...
As his studies continued in subsequent years, he showed that the responses of the cell were a function of its gross structure, important aspects of which were the cell's asymmetry and correlated spiral movement. Similar results were obtained on various unicellular and multicellular organisms.
|
From page 174... ...
174 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS the cells, especially their asymmetry. The personal encounters between the two were cordial and pleasant, but the publications of Jennings's opponents, especially Garrey, remained unaltered in tone.
|
From page 175... ...
, he was appointed Director of the lake survey for the summer of 1902, his last stint with the survey. Still mired in money problems, Jennings pushed ahead during the academic year 1902-1903 on the proposed potboiler, the textbook of introductory biology.
|
From page 176... ...
(He needed the money for apparatus, reagents, typing, and drawing.) So-on thereafter, the institution made him a grant of $1000 toward a research table and expenses for a year at the Naples Zoological Laboratory.
|
From page 177... ...
These papers were published as a book, Contributions to the Study of the Behavior of Lower Organisms. (Publication #16 of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1904~.
|
From page 178... ...
So he was shocked into taking it easy during the summer of 1905. Although only thi-rtyseven, he wrote, "I can't work so steadily as I used to, and it looks as if I can't expect to do any restore than my college work and keep well." He spent June at the Tortugas Laboratory which was run by his old friend, Mayr, from the summer at Newport, and there met Professor Brooks, famous researcher and biological philosopher and Director of the Zoological Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University, who was soon to play a major role in his life.
|
From page 179... ...
Mark Baldwin. The lecture garnered Jennings an offer to come to Johns Hopkins as Associate Professor of Experimental Zoology, salary $3000, with the promise of succeeding Brooks as Director when Brooks retired.
|
From page 180... ...
On this and his other behavior work, he gave greatly admired lectures at La Jolla, San Diego, Berkeley, and Chicago before settling in Baltimore just before the fall term of 1906. Jennings's experimental research, until the call to Johns Hopkins, was all conducted on the reactions of lower organisms to stimuli.
|
From page 181... ...
So Jennings became Henry Walters Professor and Director of the Zoological Laboratory in 1910. He had indeed reached the top at the age of forty
|
From page 182... ...
Jennings had doubtless been brought to Johns Hopkins in the hope that he would reverse the trend. He began by teaching and directing research in areas of experimental zoology, behavior, and general physiology.
|
From page 183... ...
He then made a comparative study of other organisms at about the same level of complexity, other ciliates and other Protozoa, following this with studies of multicellular organisms. At each step in the sequence of studies, he noted the special features exhibited by each organism and the common features or generalities shown by organisms at similar or different levels of complexity, ending with the fundamentals and their implications for biology and for man.
|
From page 184... ...
His radically experimental analyses led him thus to a monistic view in which mind could not be separated as distinct from matter. The human mind and human behavior were as determined in their operation as those of lower organisms, and they operated on the same basic principle of the interaction of outer factors with inner structural factors.
|
From page 185... ...
It left open, however, the questions of how early in evolution these laws began to operate, whether they evolved independently in plants and animals, being somehow connected with multicellularity, and whether some more primitive and simpler mechanism of heredity existed in unicellular organisms. There was also a need to find organisms that would be more favorable for pushing genetic analysis still further.
|
From page 186... ...
In other words, they were phenotypic, not genotypic, diversities. The principle of the genetic uniformity and constancy of the clone, established first for Paramecium and by his students for other ciliates, was later extended by other students to asexually reproducing multicellular organisms (Hydra, rotifers)
|
From page 187... ...
To his astonishment, he continued to obtain hereditary diversities in abundance in spite of successive self-fertilizations. His contemporary, Victor Jollos, obtained comparable results and concluded that the hereditary variations that both he and Jennings observed were not due to Mendelian phenomena, but to temporarily persistent variations (Dauermodifkationen'J in expression of a constant, pure genotype.
|
From page 188... ...
In the midst of these studies, he gave one of the evening lectures at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory on the subject of the theory of the linear arrangement of genes in the chromosome. I have heard that the events were somewhat as follows.
|
From page 189... ...
was formed at the time of cell division and then persisted unchanged. Selection for variations in shell characteristics eventually yielded (1916)
|
From page 190... ...
In his day, Lamarckism was still defended in some quarters on the basis of purported observations and experiments, especially by Kammerer. Jennings repeatedly reviewed the evidence critically and stimulated students to undertake studies of the possible inheritance of characteristics acquired as a result of environmental action.
|
From page 191... ...
extended to other rhizopods the kind of study he had made on Difflugia; and some extended work to multicellular organisms. Karl Lashley, later famous as a psychologist, who was probably attracted to Jennings because of his work on behavior, found Jennings steeped in genetics and, entering into the spirit of the laboratory, was the first student to extend the genetic work to multicellular organisms.
|
From page 192... ...
In 1930, with support of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Jennings returned for a few years to a reinvestigation of the genetics of paramecia. He soon lost heart in it, however, because of his inability to cross genetically diverse clones, so he went back to Difflugia.
|
From page 193... ...
; he was elected President of the American Society of Zoologists in 1908 and to membership in the National Academy of Sciences at the relatively young age of forty-six ( 19 14~. His elevation to the position of Director of the Zoological Laboratory in 1910 naturally brought about great changes in his life.
|
From page 194... ...
Together they presented a symposium on the genetics of lower organisms at the December 1914 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The importance and influence of the Johns Hopkins laboratory was again on the rise, fulfilling the design of Brooks.
|
From page 195... ...
HERBERT SPENCER JENNINGS 195 of a factotum, a servant that attends to all sorts of things to further the work of others, but with no opportunity to do serious work himself." Some relief came in 1919 with the appointment of his former student, Ruth Stocking Lynch, as his assistant in both research and office work, but this hardly offset the increase in demands on him. Nevertheless, Jennings came to realize that he was much appreciated.
|
From page 196... ...
196 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS than they deserved. The year (1928)
|
From page 197... ...
For many years he escaped from the Baltimore heat as soon as possible after the spring semester, spending the summer at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, often with assistants and students, researching and enjoying contacts with the biologists there. Two joyous summers (1925 and 1926)
|
From page 198... ...
198 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS could in shorter periods prepare and give outside lectures or write and publish essays and books about the matters he dealt with at length in his courses and seminars. Using his gifts for clear thinking and for abstracting main ideas, together with his extraordinary talent for exposition in lucid, engaging language, he became an eminently successful educator of biologists, people in related fields, and the reading public.
|
From page 199... ...
HERBERT SPENCER JENNINGS 199 imaginative successors are clearly and prophetically set forth in those three books. In my opinion, however, the greatest and perhaps the most enduring of Jennings's books is The Universe and Life (1933~.
|
From page 200... ...
THE FINAL YEARS (1937-1947) Jennings was sixty-nine, a year shy of mandatory retirement, when he began the series of investigations on the genetics of Paramecium bursaria.
|
From page 201... ...
HERBERT SPENCER JENNINGS 201 Immediately after the Richmond meeting, Jennings packed up nearly 2000 of his experimental cultures and set off with his assistant, Elizabeth Kirkwood, for Los Angeles, where he was to be Visiting Professor at UCLA for the spring semester. Unable to get a train compartment from Chicago on, he took an upper berth for himself and a lower for his satchels of culture vials, which he nursed along with tender care.
|
From page 202... ...
bursaria and failed only to finish the book he was writing about them and their general significance, as he had summarized this in his Patten Lectures. The unfinished manuscript of the book based on these lectures is in the Library of the American Philosophical Society.
|
From page 203... ...
In the quarter century since this discovery, all well-studied ciliates and many other unicellular organisms as well have been found to conform to the same principle—the species of the taxonomist is a group of biological species. Concentrating most of his attention on one of these biological species of P
|
From page 204... ...
Jennings concluded that natural death did not arise first, as some held. with the evolution of multicellular organisms; but he did not exclude the possibility that some clones might be immortal; some did not die during several years of culture.
|
From page 205... ...
HERBERT SPENCER JENNINGS 205 Jennings was genuinely amazed throughout his life at his own success. He bore his eminence and honors modestly.
|
From page 206... ...
Fish Commission, Biological Sur vey of the Great Lakes 1901-1903 Assistant Professor of Zoology, University of Michigan 1902 Director, U.S. Fish Commission, Biological Survey of the Great Lakes 1903-1904 Research Assistant, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Naples Zoological Station 1903-1906 Assistant Professor of Zoology, University of Pennsyl vania 1906-1907 Associate Professor of Physiological Zoology, Johns Hopkins University 1907-1910 Professor of Experimental Zoology, Johns Hopkins Uni versity 1910-1938 Henry Walters Professor and Director of the Zoological Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University 1938-1947 Emeritus Professor, Johns Hopkins University 1939-1947 Research Associate, University of California HONORARY DEGREES 1909 1918 1933 L1.D., Clark University Sc.D., University of Michigan Sc.D., University of Pennsylvania
|
From page 207... ...
HERBERT SPENCER JENNINGS 207 1933 1935 1940 1941 1943 L1.D., Oberlin College A.M., Oxford University L1.D., University of Pennsylvania L1.D., University of Chicago L1.D., University of California VISITING LECTURESHIPS AND PROFESSORSHIPS 1925 Stanford University 1931 Keio University, Tokyo, Japan 1933 Terry Lecturer, Yale University 1934 Vanuxem Lecturer, Princeton University 1935-1936 Eastman Visiting Professor, Oxford University 1939 University of California at Los Angeles 1940 Leidy Lecturer, University of Pennsylvania 1943 Patten Lecturer, Indiana University AWARDS 1896 and 1908 Walker Prize, Boston Society of Natural History 1925 Leidy Award, Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sci ences 1931 One of 14 scientists to have name inscribed in Buhl Hall of Science, Pennsylvania State College for Women MEMBERSHIPS 1918-1924 and 1928-1936 Member of the Council of the American Philosophical Society 1920-1925 National Research Council, Division of Biology and Agriculture Chairman of the B ache Fund, National Academy of Sciences Member of the Council, National Academy of Sciences CORRESPONDING MEMBERSHIPS Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia Russian Academy of Sciences Societe de Biologie de France
|
From page 208... ...
Genetics Society of America (First Chairman, 1922) Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine Eugenics Research Association MISCELLANEOUS 1905-1938 Trustee, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts (Trustee emeritus, 1938-1947)
|
From page 209... ...
In: Biographical Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, pp.
|
From page 210... ...
Soc. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Proc.
|
From page 211... ...
1900 The behavior of unicellular organisms. Biology Lectures from the Marine Biology Laboratory of Woods Hole, 1899, pp.
|
From page 212... ...
Studies on reactions to stimuli in unicellular organisms.
|
From page 213... ...
Psychol., 15~2~: 138~3. Papers on reactions to electricity in unicellular organisms.
|
From page 214... ...
I The fate of new structural characters in Paramecium, in connection with the problem of the inheritance of acquired characters in unicellular organisms.
|
From page 215... ...
Zool., 11~1~:1-134. Pure lines in the study of genetics in lower organisms.
|
From page 216... ...
216 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS Archiv fur Hydrobiologie und Planktonkunde, 9:648-~; also in I Philos.
|
From page 217... ...
Life and Death; Heredity and Evolution in Unicellular Organisms. Boston: Richard G
|
From page 218... ...
Review. Social Life in the Animal World, by F
|
From page 219... ...
HERBERT SPENCER JENNINGS 219 Review. Animal Mind, by Francis Pitt.
|
From page 220... ...
The diverse biotypes produced by conjugation within a clone of Paramecium aurelia.
|
From page 221... ...
Sci., 24: 112-17. Sex reaction types and their interrelations in Paramecium bursaria.
|
From page 222... ...
1879-1940. In: National Academy of Sciences, Biographical Memoirs, 22:295-347.
|
From page 223... ...
Paramecium bursaria: life history.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.