"Take Five" is an occasional feature in which we pose five questions to a Marine Biological Laboratory community member about their career, dreams, and passions. Here we profile historian and philosopher of biology , University Professor at Arizona State University.
Over several decades, Maienschein’s contributions to MBL scholarship have been prodigious. She directs the ; co-directs the that have been held at MBL for 35 years; edits the book series published by UChicago Press; co-directs the at MBL, which pairs scientists and historians to inform each other’s work; and authored a history of the MBL: .
Maienschein is the recipient of the from the History of Science Society, the most prestigious award the society annually bestows.
When and why did you first come to the MBL, and what were your impressions? What made you want to come back?
Well, who wouldn't want to come back? I came in 1976 for the first time because I had my first National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. I was a graduate student and it was a dissertation grant to come here and reproduce old experiments, using old lab equipment. I do history of developmental biology, so a lot of the people I was studying did their work at MBL. I got a little grant to sit in a lab in Lillie with old equipment and have old scientists come by and say, “No, that's not the way T.H. Morgan would have done it.” It was phenomenal. And everybody adopted me because they thought it was so cute or weird or whatever. All the courses took me on their field trips, and it was great. I loved it.
I started coming back regularly in 1987. The MBL’s centennial was in 1988 and the year before, then-director Paul Gross said, “I'd like to start a History of Biology course at MBL, and I'd like the first event of the centennial celebration to be that course.” He invited Garland Allen, who was the premiere historian of biology, and Gar said, “Okay, but can I do it with somebody else?” And then Gar asked me. The two of us started the course and ran it for years, and then other people came in to co-lead it as well. We're still doing it, 35 years later.
You have authored much scholarship on the history of the MBL, which was founded in 1888. Are there particular eras at MBL that you feel were pivotal, in a way that still resonates today?
Scientifically, early on, the work on cells and development was really important. It was pivotal the way the MBL brought together research across heredity, development, and cell studies using excellent microscopy equipment and techniques. The MBL encouraged everybody not to specialize too much and to draw on multiple kinds of work. Thomas Hunt Morgan, for instance, came to the MBL every summer to study development in many organisms and later, when he became known as a geneticist, he continued coming to the MBL.
Early on, there was also interest in animal behavior and neurobiology. The first small Neurobiology course was in 1896, but it didn't really take off until much later. Neurobiology became extremely important, of course, in ways that continue to this day. So scientifically, the MBL has carried some traditional fields forward while also adding new questions and new ways of studying them.
Microscopy has been important from the very beginning. It was important to the MBL to have the best available equipment. And representatives of microscope companies like Zeiss have come to MBL in the summer and brought their latest equipment with them. It's not a moment in time, exactly, but a phenomenon that has been very influential on the kinds of work done.
Another phenomenon that's probably most important is the inclusion of women. A lot of women came to MBL at the very beginning—and then in the 1920s and ‘30s [their numbers dropped], and World War II brought all kinds of changes in who could come spend a summer doing research. But then by the ‘40s and ‘50s, a lot of women came here and found a comfortable place to do research, whereas before, they weren't getting a job, or they were in their husband's lab, or they were in a teaching college where they couldn’t do research. This was a place they could come and be taken seriously. If they were doing valuable work, it was recognized, it was embraced.