Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: Cell Mechanisms and Cell Biology
- 2 Explaining Cellular Phenomena through Mechanisms
- 3 The Locus of Cell Mechanisms: Terra Incognita between Cytology and Biochemistry
- 4 Creating New Instruments and Research Techniques for Discovering Cell Mechanisms
- 5 Entering the Terra Incognita between Biochemistry and Cytology: Putting New Research Tools to Work in the 1940s
- 6 New Knowledge: The Mechanisms of the Cytoplasm
- 7 Giving Cell Biology an Institutional Identity
- Afterword
- References
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: Cell Mechanisms and Cell Biology
- 2 Explaining Cellular Phenomena through Mechanisms
- 3 The Locus of Cell Mechanisms: Terra Incognita between Cytology and Biochemistry
- 4 Creating New Instruments and Research Techniques for Discovering Cell Mechanisms
- 5 Entering the Terra Incognita between Biochemistry and Cytology: Putting New Research Tools to Work in the 1940s
- 6 New Knowledge: The Mechanisms of the Cytoplasm
- 7 Giving Cell Biology an Institutional Identity
- Afterword
- References
- Index
Summary
This book is the product of research spanning two decades. In the 1980s I had been investigating the history of cytology in the nineteenth century and biochemistry in the early twentieth century when I responded to an announcement from the American Society for Cell Biology of a fellowship for support of research on the history of cell biology. With their financial support in 1986 and 1987 I began to examine the creation of modern cell biology in the decades after World War II. I am enormously grateful not only for the fellowship funding but also for the invaluable assistance of individuals associated with ASCB. In particular, I thank Robert Trelstad, then Secretary of ASCB, who invited me to society and executive council meetings, gave me encouragement, and provided entrée to senior members of the society. A number of the founders of modern cell biology were still active in the society and I had the opportunity to meet and interview them regarding their own contributions to cell biology and their recollections of the early days of this field. I also had access to the archives of the society, which were then housed at the Society offices. (They have since been transferred to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.) I have relied heavily on this material in analyzing in Chapter 7 the history of the American Society for Cell Biology.
In the early 1990s I received additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Discovering Cell MechanismsThe Creation of Modern Cell Biology, pp. xi - xiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005