1. See numerous references on the origins of molecular biology in P.G. Abir-Am, “Themes, genres and orders of legitimation in the consolidation of new disciplines: Deconstructing the historiography of molecular biology,” History of Science, 1985, 23: 73–117, which also includes a detailed review of the three available books to date on the history of molecular biology: R.C. Olby, The Path to the Double Helix (London: Macmillan, 1974): H. Sajet, L’essor de la biologie’ moléculaire, 19511–1965 (Paris: CNRS. 1978): H.F. Judson. The Eighth Dar of Creation: The Makers of the Revolution in Biology (New York: Basic Books. 1979). This topic is further updated in R.C. Olby. The molecular revolution in biology,“ in R.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor. J.R.R. Christie and M.J.S. Hodge, eds.. A Companion to History of Science (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 503–520, and P.G. Abir-Am, ”Noblesse oblige: Lives of molecular biologists,“ ISIS, 1991, 82: 326–343.
2. For the collective views of members of research schools of molecular biology see J. Cairns, G.S. Stent and J.D. Watson, eds., Pliage and the Origins of Molecular Biology (Cold Spring Harbor, New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1966); A. Rich and N. Davidson, cds., Structural Chemistry and Molecular Biology (San Francisco: Freeman, 1968): J. Monod and E. Borek, eds., Of Microbes and Life (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971): A. Lwoff and A. Ullmann, eds., Origins of Molecular Biology: A Tribute to Jacques Monod (New York: Academic Press, 1979). For a comparative account of several research schools via a relational database see Abir-Am, “Research schools of molecular biology in US. UK and France, 1930–1970,” Work-in-progress Reports to NSF, 1986–1990, forthcoming as a monograph.
3. The theoretical apparatus used to articulate the interdependence of conceptual, social and political dimensions of scientific change in general, and its applicability to the problem of the origins of molecular biology in particular has been discussed in P.G. Abir-Am, “The Biotheoretical Gathering, transdisciplinary authority and the incipient legitimation of molecular biology in the 1930s: New perspective in the historical sociology of science”, History of Science, 1987, 25:1–70, an abridged version of Abir-Am, “The Biotheoretical Gathering in England, 1932–1938 and the origins of molecular biology: An essay on the construction, legitimation and authority of transdisciplinary knowledge in a historical context” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Montreal, 1983/4), 600 pp.
4. For details see P.G. Abir-Am. “Recasting the disciplinary order in science: A deconstruction of rhetoric on ‘biology and physics’ at two International Congresses in 1931,” Humanity and Society, 1985, 9: 388–427.
5. For an overall perspective of the problem of protein research in the 1930s see P.R. Srinivasan, J.S. Fruton and J.T. Edsall, eds.. The Origins of Biochemistt_y, A Retrospect on Proteins (New York: The New York Academy of Sciences Press. 1979); see also the critical essay review of this collection by P.G. Abir-Am in British Journal for the History of Science. 1982, 15: 301 —305.