I've recently been working to unearth the scientific genealogy of Carlos Bustamante's lab. With the aid of some labmates, we have made quite a bit of progress! We have the lineage to the 17th century, and it goes thusly:

Carlos José Bustamante

• 1951-present
  
• Ph.D. in Biophysics, University of California, Berkeley, 1981
  

• 1930-present
  
• Ph.D. University Wisconsin, 1954
  

• 1912-2003
  
• Ph.D., Stanford University, 1935
  

• 1894-1966
  
• Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1919
  

• 1884-1959
  
• Ph.D., Universität Breslau, 1911
  
• [California Digital Library]
  

• 1860-1925
  
• Ph.D., Universität Berlin, 1884
  
• Dissertation: Über eine neue Interferenz-Erscheinung an planparallelen Glasplatten und eine Methode die Planparallelität solcher Gläser zu prüfen
  

• 1821-1894
  
• M.D., Königlich Medizinisch-chirurgische Friedrich-Wilhelm Institut, Berlin, 1842
  
• [Max Planck Institute for the History of Science]
  

• 1801-1858
  
• M.D., University of Bonn, 1822
  
• [Max Planck Institute for the History of Science]
  

• 1771-1832
  
• M.D., Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald, 1795
  
• [MGP]
  

• 1748-1831
  
• Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 1771
  
• [MGP]
  

• 1744-1777
  
• Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 1767
  
• [MGP]
  

• 1719-1800
  
• Ph.D., Universität Leipzig, 1739
  
• Dissertation: Theoria radicum in aequationibus
  
• [MGP]
  

• 1693-1743
  
• Ph.D., Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1713
  
• Dissertation: De corpore scissuris figurisque non cruetando ductu
  
• [MGP]
  

• 1663-1727
  
• Ph.D., Universität Leipzig, 1685
  
• Dissertation: Disputationem Moralem De Divortiis Secundum Jus Naturae
  
• [MGP]
  

• 1644-1707
  
• Ph.D., Universität Leipzig, 1665
  
• Dissertation: Ex Theologia naturali — De Absoluta Dei Simplicitate, Micropolitiam, id est Rempublicam In Microcosmo Conspicuam
  
• [MGP]
  

Filed under biology · chemistry · physics · science · science history

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Getting the cover of a journal like Nature is a little bit like winning the scientific lottery. So we're very proud:

Congratulations all around, especially to Jin-Der, who has done a fantastic job of making this project work. Although we were the first to observe ribosome activity in real-time, there is so much yet to come!

Filed under berkeley · biology · chemistry · physics · science

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The University of California has its hands all over the Nobels this year, in one way or another. Today it was announced that George Smoot of the Department of Physics here at Berkeley has won the Nobel Prize in Physics for astrophysical work examining the residual blackbody radiation from the early universe. It turns out his co-recipient, John Mather, also did his graduate work here at UC^(†). From the press release:

Smoot, a resident of Berkeley, was surprised by an early morning call from Sweden to his unlisted cell phone, which the Nobel committee obtained by waking his neighbor.

"There were no rumors. I figured they only give the prize when you're close to death, and I still have enough life left in me," said Smoot, 61.

This marks the twentieth Nobel Prize awarded to Berkeley faculty, and the eighth given to faculty in the Physics Department. Around Birge and Le Conte Halls, we have lots of parking spaces marked 'NL' (these are the ones allocated to the Nobel Laureates). Looks like they'll have to clear off a handicapped spot to make room for the new bigshot.

^(†) Let us not forget Andy Fire, who won yesterday for Medicine, and who is also a Berkeley alumn.

UPDATE: I almost missed this part of the press release:

In the finest tradition of Berkeley Nobelists, George is also a dedicated teacher. In addition to working with his graduate students, he currently sponsors undergraduate researchers in his lab and this semester is teaching Physics 7B, the introductory course for science and engineering majors.

Must be a heady feeling to walk into your first class as an undergrad only to find that your lecturer was just awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics that morning.

PHOTO UPDATE: The Department of Physics just held a reception in honor of Smoot's Nobel. I was standing just behind Berkeley's Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and George Smoot during the toast, so look for my bright shining face tomorrow on the Berkeley website. I also managed to snap a couple photos on the trusty camera-phone. Below, see George Smoot and 1997 laureate Steven Chu, respectively:

Filed under berkeley · physics · science

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night, I read an old paper by Ernst Mayr on the position of biology amongst the sciences (Quarterly Review of Biology, 71(1): 97-106, 1996). In it, he posits that biology is rather radically different from other physical sciences; as a result, he says biology ought to be considered an autonomous branch of science, and not a provincial branch of physics or chemistry.

This, along with a more strident defense of biology (Science, 133: 1745-1748, 1961), surprised me more than a little bit. Since I do biophysics, I am not properly a biologist or a physicist, per se, but I do research that straddles the traditional boundaries of both fields. So I tend to look for good questions to be answered, and have not worried myself about whether my work is more "physics" or more "biology."

However, in his review, Mayr argues that there are questions dinstinctly biological in nature, and that these questions (along with some conceptual and methodological differences), make biology unique amongst the sciences. I thought I would paraphrase a few of the most interesting here:

Conceptual differences in biology

• The importance of historical narrative as an explanatory device.
• The prevalence of indeterminacy owing to the high frequency of stochastic processes, unknown factors, the presence of constraints, the interaction of multiple causes.
• The importance of quality (structure, form, function) in the properties and actions of objects, and a correlated reduction in the importance of purely quantitative differences.
• Presence of an historical constituent in the inherited program; hence legitimacy of "why" questions; capacity for the storage of historical information.

Methodological differences in biology

• The importance of observation in addition to experiment.
• The frequency of independent multiple solutions to the same problem.

Other autonomous aspects of biology

• All biological phenomena have two sets of causations, those controlled by the historically accumulated information of the genetic program (evolutionary or ultimate causations), and those controlled by the properties of the interacting system (proximate causations). The study of the historical components of each system is as legitimate a concern of biological science as the study of proximate causations.
• The outcome of biological processes is usually affected simultaneously by multiple causations, owing to the complexity of the systems interacting with complex biotic and physical environments
• Many properties of systems cannot be explained by a study of their isolated components.

It's interesting that many older biologists saw the successes of biochemistry and biophysics as a danger to the field of biology proper. Many early critics complained that such interdisciplinary research gave much to the other field, while returning relatively little to biology. In this light, the point about multiple causations (evolutionary and proximate) is still quite relevent, because the evolutionary causes are often unaddressed in many of the recent "hot" papers in biophysics.

Filed under biology · chemistry · physics · science

Posted by H. C. Hodges at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)