Trends and Transitions in 150 Years of The American Naturalist.

The American Naturalist recently passed its sesquicentennial. Throughout this long history, it regularly encountered moments of introspection and debate over its goals, mission, identity, and audience. Here, we chronicle the history of those debates and transitions at critical moments. The Naturalist began as a popular magazine for amateur naturalists in the late 1860s. In the late 1870s, it transitioned to an increasingly academic journal for professional scientists from all branches of the natural sciences. By the turn of the century, academic specialization led to increasing fragmentation of the sciences into a multitude of societies and journals, creating an identity crisis for the once-broad-reaching American Naturalist. This identity crisis was resolved when the journal pivoted around 1910 to focus on fundamental advances in the newly emerging field of genetics. In the 1960s, the journal underwent a remarkably rapid transition to its present focus on evolution and ecology. The profound shifts in the journal's contents over this time are a reflection of the historical changes in science as a whole: from amateur naturalists, to polymath professionals, to increasingly specialized academics. This chronicle reveals the ways in which The American Naturalist has left its mark on many disciplines, many of which are today only loosely affiliated with the journal, if at all.

The voice of American botanists: the founding and establishment of the American Journal of Botany, "American botany," and the Great War (1906-1935).

This paper examines the crucial early history of the American Journal of Botany from the years following the founding of the Botanical Society of America in 1906 to the termination of the agreement for publication with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in 1935. It examines the efforts of individuals like F. C. Newcombe, who did the most to raise support for the journal and became the first Editor-in-Chief, in the context of the growing numbers of professional botanists and plant scientists who were actively engaged in research requiring appropriate publication venues and in the process of forming an independent identity as "American botanists." It also examines the launching of the journal in the context of the Great War in Europe and the transition from German botany to American botany in the second decade of the 20th century.

Disciplining and popularizing: evolution and its publics from the modern synthesis to the present.

This paper serves as an introduction to a special collection of papers exploring the centrifugal and centripetal forces in the process of disciplining and popularizing the science of evolution in the period preceding and after the modern synthesis of evolution.

Genetics behind barbed wire: Masuo Kodani, émigré geneticists, and wartime genetics research at Manzanar relocation center.

This article explores the sociopolitical backdrop of genetics research during the politically turbulent decades of the mid-20th century that saw the persecution, displacement, and relocation of unpopular minorities in both the United States and Europe. It explores how geneticists in the United States accommodated these disruptions through formal and informal émigré networks and how the subsequent war affected their research programs and their lives. It does so by focusing on the career and life of geneticist Masuo Kodani, who, as a Japanese American, found himself conducting unexpected cytogenetics research in Manzanar, a "relocation center," or internment camp, located in the California desert, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war, Kodani's subsequent career continued to be shaped by his experiences as a Japanese American and by the specific skills as a cytogeneticist that he demonstrated at a critical period in the history of 20th-century genetics. His many relocations in search of employment culminated in his work with the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission on human chromosomes, for which he is best known.

Singing his praises: Darwin and his theory in song and musical production.

This essay offers a chronological survey of the range of songs and musical productions inspired by Darwin and his theory since they entered the public sphere some 150 years ago.It draws on an unusual set of historical materials, including illustrated sheet music, lyrics and librettos, wax cylinder recordings, vinyl records, and video recordings located in digital and sound archives and on the Internet. It also offers a characterization of the varied genres and a literary analysis of the forms as a way of understanding the diverse audiences engaging, and indeed "entertaining," Darwin and the implications of his theory. It argues that the engagement with Darwin and his celebrated theory is far more creative than has been appreciated and recommends that historians of science further explore Darwin and his theory as embodied ina fuller range of cultural expressions. This will lead to an understanding of Darwin's "iconic"status that draws on a fuller range of human sensory experience and that also enables us to appreciate his--and his theory's-enduring power to engage the human imagination.

The "Plant Drosophila": E.B. Babcock, the genus "Crepis," and the evolution of a genetics research program at Berkeley, 1915-1947.

This paper explores the research and administrative efforts of Ernest Brown Babcock, head of the Division of Genetics in the College of Agriculture at the University of California, Berkeley, the first academic unit so named in the United States. It explores the rationale for his choice of "model organism," the development--and transformation--of his ambitious genetics research program centering on the weedy plant genus named "Crepis" (commonly known as the hawkbeard), along with examining in detail the historical development of the understanding of genetic mechanisms of evolutionary change in plants leading to the period of the evolutionary synthesis. Chosen initially as the plant counterpart of Thomas Hunt Morgan's "Drosophila melanogaster," the genus "Crepis" instead came to serve as the counterpart of Theodosius Dobzhansky's "Drosophila pseudoobscura," leading the way in plant evolutionary genetics, and eventually providing the first comprehensive systematic treatise of any genus that was part of the movement known as biosystematics, or the "new" systematics. The paper also suggests a historical rethinking of the application of the terms model organism, research program, and experimental system in the history of biology.

Keeping up with Dobzhansky: G. Ledyard Stebbins, Jr., plant evolution, and the evolutionary synthesis.

This paper explores the complex relationship between the plant evolutionist G. Ledyard Stebbins and the animal evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky. The manner in which the plant evolution was brought into line, synthesized, or rendered consistent with the understanding of animal evolution (and especially insect evolution) is explored, especially as it culminated with the publication of Stebbins's 1950 book Variation and Evolution in Plants. The paper explores the multi-directional traffic of influence between Stebbins and Dobzhansky, but also their social and professional networks that linked plant evolutionists like Stebbins with Edgar Anderson, Carl Epling, and the 'Carnegie team' of Jens Clausen, David Keck, and William Hiesey with collaborators on the animal side like I. Michael Lerner, Sewall Wright and L.C. Dunn and other 'architects' of the synthesis like Ernst Mayr, Julian Huxley and George Gaylord Simpson. The compatibility in training, work styles, methodologies, goals, field sites, levels of analysis, and even choice of organismic systems is explored between Stebbins and Dobzhansky. Finally, the extent to which coevolution between plants and insects is reflected in the relationship is explored, as is the power dynamic in the relationship between two of the most visible figures associated with the evolutionary synthesis.

One hundred years of American botany: a short history of the Botanical Society of America.

This paper offers highlights from the 100 (plus) years of the Botanical Society of America (BSA) and draws extensively on the archives of the BSA. In addition to examining the founding of the society and the attempt to "professionalize" botany in late 19th century America, the paper also explores the complex relations between the BSA and a number of related societies in the United States, the Society's struggle to create a coherent identity for itself, the place of botany as a whole in the context of the burgeoning biological sciences in the 20th century, and the changing role of the BSA in an international context. The paper assesses both the achievements and the challenges facing the BSA. It closes by offering some historical reflections on the status of "botany" as a science and the historical significance of terms like "plant biology" and "plant science."

"It Ain't Over 'til it's Over": Rethinking the Darwinian Revolution.

This paper attempts a critical examination of scholarly understanding of the historical event referred to as "the Darwinian Revolution." In particular, it concentrates on some of the major scholarly works that have appeared since the publication in 1979 of Michael Ruse's The Darwinian Revolution: Nature Red in Tooth and Claw. The paper closes by arguing that fruitful critical perspectives on what counts as this event can be gained by locating it in a range of historiographic and disciplinary contexts that include the emergence of the discipline of evolutionary biology (following the "evolutionary synthesis"), the 1959 Darwin centenary, and the maturation of the discipline of the history of science. Broader perspectives on something called the "Darwinian Revolution" are called for that include recognizing that it does not map a one-to-one correspondence with the history of evolution, broadly construed.