Garland E. Allen

Garland Edward Allen III (February 13, 1936 – February 10, 2023) was an American historian and biographer at Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests lie primarily in the history of genetics, eugenics and evolution.

Garland E. Allen
Born	Garland Edward Allen III (1936-02-13)February 13, 1936 Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.
Died	February 10, 2023(2023-02-10) (aged 86)
Education	University of Louisville Harvard University
Known for	Writings on the life of Thomas Hunt Morgan Work on the history of eugenics
Awards	2017 George Sarton Medal from the History of Science Society
Scientific career
Fields	History of science Philosophy of science
Institutions	Washington University in St. Louis
Thesis	Thomas Hunt Morgan: The Relation of Genetic and Evolution Theory, 1900-1925  (1966)
Doctoral advisors	Ernst Mayr Everett Mendelsohn

Life

Garland Edward Allen III was born on February 13, 1936, in Louisville, Kentucky.^[1] He graduated from the University of Louisville in 1957. He completed his PhD in the history of science at Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1966 under the direction of Ernst Mayr and Everett Mendelsohn after spending four years as a high school biology teacher at Northfield Mount Hermon School.^[2][3] In 1967 he joined the faculty of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. In November 1969 he went to Cuba as part of the Venceremos Brigade and spent about 5 months harvesting sugar cane.^[4][5] He held several visiting professorships at Harvard and retired from Washington University in 2017 as professor emeritus.

Allen died on February 10, 2023, at the age of 86.^[6]

Thomas Hunt Morgan

Allen offered the fullest treatment of the life and work of Thomas Hunt Morgan, himself a Kentucky native. Allen's extensive review of Morgan presented the story of an experimentalist who staunchly avoided open political ties to science for fear of biasing the research. His discussion of the fly room, first at Columbia University, then at California Institute of Technology, suggests that the collaborative environment within which Morgan worked with his students, H.J. Muller, Alfred Sturtevant, Calvin Bridges, and Theodosius Dobzhansky played an important role in establishing Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism for genetics, and launching the careers of these titans of 20th century genetics.^[7] Allen's work contributes to the body of history chronicling the emergence of American science.

Eugenics

Allen was an international leader on the history of eugenics.^[8] His work suggests that eugenics movements were not merely localized to Germany, Britain and America, but rather that eugenics constituted an international ideological shift from Social Darwinism, whereby nature would weed out people with poor heredity, to an ideology where humanity must control its own genetic stock.^[9] He suggested that with the unveiling of the human genome, we should be cautious of a new wave of the eugenics movement.^[10]

Works

• Matter, Energy, and Life (4 Editions)
• Life Sciences in the 20th Century (1975)
• Thomas Hunt Morgan: The Man and his Science (1978)^[11]
• Biology: Scientific Process and Social Issues (2002)

Accolades

• 2011: Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science^[12]
• Trustee and Chairman of the history committee at the Marine Biological Laboratory
• President of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology
• 2017: George Sarton Medal AAAS