Books by Matthew Holmes
University of Pittsburgh Press , 2024
The global triumph of Mendelian genetics in the twentieth century was not a foregone conclusion, ... more The global triumph of Mendelian genetics in the twentieth century was not a foregone conclusion, thanks to the existence of graft hybrids. These chimeral plants and animals are created by grafting tissue from one organism to another with the goal of passing the newly hybridized genetic material on to their offspring. But prevailing genetic theory insisted that heredity was confined to the sex cells and there was no inheritance of characteristics acquired during an organism’s lifetime. Under sustained attacks from geneticists, scientific belief in the existence of graft hybrids slowly began to decline. Yet ordinary horticulturalists and breeders continued to believe in the power of grafting. Matthew Holmes tells the story of these organisms—which include multicolored chickens and black nightshades that grew tomatoes—and their enduring influence on twentieth-century biology. Their creators sought a goal as ambitious as the wildest dreams of genetic engineering today: to smash the barriers between species and freely exchange genes between organisms. The Graft Hybrid presents a greater understanding of the controversial history of graft hybrids, offering a crucial intervention in the history of genetics and the future of biological science.
Now available at https://upittpress.org/books/9780822947936/.
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Papers by Matthew Holmes
The British Journal for the History of Science , 2023
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, British colonists in Jamaica became increasingly exasp... more Towards the end of the nineteenth century, British colonists in Jamaica became increasingly exasperated by the damage caused to their sugar plantations by rats. In 1872, a British planter attempted to solve this problem by introducing the small Indian mongoose (Urva auropunctata). The animals, however, turned on Jamaica's insectivorous birds and reptiles, leading to an explosion in the tick population. This paper situates the mongoose catastrophe as a closing chapter in the history of the nineteenth-century acclimatization movement. While foreign observers saw the introduction of the mongoose as a cautionary tale, caricaturing British Jamaica as overrun by a plague of weasels and ticks, British colonists, administrators and naturalistsidentifying a gradual decline of both populationsargued that the 'balance of nature' would eventually reassert itself. As this paper argues, through this dubious claim they were attempting to retrospectively rationalize or justify the introductions and their disastrous aftermath. This strategy enabled them to gloss over the lasting ecological damage caused by the mongoose, and allowed its adherents to continue their uncritical support of both the Jamaican plantation economy and animal introductions in the British Empire.
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Itinerario, 2023
The coffee plantations of late nineteenth-century Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) were rocked by a ... more The coffee plantations of late nineteenth-century Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) were rocked by a series of crises, including the appearance of numerous insect pests. Scholars have demonstrated that nineteenth-century plantations were both ecologically vulnerable and reliant on exploited labour, with entomology deployed in their defence across the British Empire. Yet this paper argues that, despite its global reach, colonial entomology was sometimes conducted by individuals in pursuit of such parochial concerns as their local reputation and social standing. This case study examines the beetles of Ceylon through the eyes of Scottish plantation owner and amateur naturalist Robert Camperdown Haldane. His 1881 tract All About Grub erroneously identified the island's beetles as relatives of the European cockchafer (Melolontha melolontha). Although Haldane was a well-travelled individual who adopted a global science, he was also a product of Ceylon's plantation society: touchy about his social status and dismissive of his Indian labourers. The insular priorities of individuals or tight-knit communities could direct an enterprise with superficially global characteristics.
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History of the Human Sciences , 2023
British biologist and science populariser J. B. S. Haldane was known as a contrarian, whose myria... more British biologist and science populariser J. B. S. Haldane was known as a contrarian, whose myriad ideas and beliefs would shift to oppose whomever he chose to argue with. Yet Haldane's support for synthetic food remained remarkably stable throughout his life. This article argues that Haldane's engagement with synthetic food during the 1930s and 1940s was shaped by his frustration with the status and direction of scientific research in Britain. Drawing upon the Haldane Papers, I reconstruct how Haldane's interest in synthetic food emerged from the biochemical and physiological optimism of the early 20th century. His mid-20th-century writings were an opportunity for Haldane to voice his political opinions. He attempted to erase the conceptual divide between farm and factory, maintained that food shortages were a capitalist construct, and criticised British colonialism. By pointing out the failure of existing economic systems and governments to develop synthetic food, Haldane made the case that food production should be placed under the control of biologists.
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Plants, People, Planet , 2022
The contentious debate over genetically modified (GM) crops in Britain has entered a new era foll... more The contentious debate over genetically modified (GM) crops in Britain has entered a new era following Brexit and the development of gene editing. At the same time, the events of the 1980s and 1990s are now entering historical archives, including the GM Archive at the Science Museum in London. This article explores how fears of unnaturalness and arguments from historical continuity informed the British GM controversy. It also analyses the limitations of these modern archives. The concerns surrounding the naturalness and continuity of biotechnology have recently been resurrected following suggestions that gene editing will be employed in plant breeding. Summary • This research examines the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops to Britain, including the backlash from environmentalist groups and the public that led to a de facto government moratorium on their commercialisation in 1998. • Harnessing archival materials from the Science Museum's GM Archive, this paper shows that GM was viewed as an alien or unnatural technology in Britain, while campaigns from Monsanto and scientific supporters of GM attempted to show how recombinant DNA technology was simply the latest step in a long history of plant breeding. • By moving outside the archive, it becomes clear that the creation of this narrative from continuity was a standard industry strategy. Appeals to the history of plant breeding was a strategy adopted by Monsanto well before the British GM controversy, while twentieth-century food scares had already undermined public trust in government and industry. • Public concern over the naturalness of biotechnology remains. Meanwhile, contemporary advocates of gene editing have begun to make similar arguments to those deployed in the 1990s, highlighting the similarity of gene editing to natural variation and selection.
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Notes and Records: the Royal Society Journal of the History of Science, 2022
Despite a surge of recent scholarship on the long and broad history of biotechnology, the use of ... more Despite a surge of recent scholarship on the long and broad history of biotechnology, the use of biological controls such as fungal and insect vectors does not immediately spring to mind when considering early attempts to engineer life. Yet the early twentieth century saw an ambitious attempt to artificially cultivate and disseminate the parasitic Empusa muscae fungus to destroy the housefly ( Musca domestica ). This paper argues that E. muscae represented an early twentieth-century disconnect between the promised hopes of biological control and the problematic reality of its use. During the late nineteenth century, bacteriological techniques established that the housefly spread disease, while biological controls were trialled against locusts and other insects in North America and South Africa. In 1912, Edgar Hesse successfully cultivated E. muscae at the Working Men's College in London. His ambition to use the fungus to exterminate the housefly was short-lived, thwarted by tech...
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Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2019
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s “Science of Form” – the explanation of biological development and mor... more D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s “Science of Form” – the explanation of biological development and morphology through physical forces and mathematical laws – has traditionally been viewed as an idiosyncratic, even heretical, episode in the history of evolutionary biology. Yet recent scholarship has sought to overturn this view by demonstrating that Thompson was active in contemporary scientific networks. This paper argues that a key influence upon Thompson’s seminal work, On Growth and Form (1917), may be far more practical, and lie closer to home, than previously realised: experimental demonstrations of basic concepts in physics. Harnessing previously unpublished archival sources, this paper traces Thompson’s correspondence with Charles Darling, Arthur Worthington and Cecil Warburton. In these exchanges, Thompson described his own experiments, or requested that experiments be conducted on his behalf. This correspondence, and its subsequent inclusion in the first edition of On Growth and Form, revises our current picture of Thompson from that of an abstract thinker to keen experimentalist. Moreover, his contact with physicists indicates that simple experiments enabled extensive crosstalk between early twentieth century physics and biology.
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Melancholy Consequences: Britain’s Long Relationship with Agricultural Chemicals Since the Mid-Eighteenth Century, 2019
Chemicals used to control agricultural diseases and pests have formed a significant aspect of rur... more Chemicals used to control agricultural diseases and pests have formed a significant aspect of rural life in Britain since at least the mid-eighteenth century. This paper argues that agricultural chemicals have long been subject to public health and environmental concern. Harnessing agricultural textbooks, periodicals and newspaper reports, this paper charts the use of arsenic and copper sulphate as means of preventing fungal disease in wheat over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During this time the dangers and benefits associated with chemical seed steeps-a mixture of water with arsenic or copper sulphate in which seeds were immersed-were thoroughly explored: landowners and agricultural improvers released their own recipes, suggested alternative remedies for fungal disease and even carried out crop trials to test the efficiency of chemical preventatives. Yet, by the mid-nineteenth century, seed steeps had become an issue of public health and government concern, as noxious substances poisoned game birds intended for human consumption. Embracing a 'long-run' history of agricultural chemicals enriches current debates on the use, regulation and impact of these products.
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Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, 2018
Somatic hybridization is the particle collider of the biological world: where plant cells strippe... more Somatic hybridization is the particle collider of the biological world: where plant cells stripped of their cell wall are fused to create interspecific crosses containing a huge range of genetic information. This paper charts the origins of somatic hybridization and its rise and fall as a plant breeding technique. During the 1960s and 1970s, the creation of somatic hybrids through cell fusion promised a new era of crop improvement. Yet the promises of somatic hybridization were instead fulfilled by advances in recombinant DNA technology. Rather than cast somatic hybridization as a failed research program, this paper argues that a number of factors significantly slowed, but did not halt, developments in somatic hybridization research from the 1960s; the technique should therefore be considered a dormant biotechnology. Reconstructing the history of somatic hybridization reveals a new history of modern biotechnology beyond genetic modification, dominated by plant physiologists.
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Journal of the History of Biology, Oct 2017
During the latter-half of the nineteenth century, the utility of the house sparrow (Passer domest... more During the latter-half of the nineteenth century, the utility of the house sparrow (Passer domesticus) to humankind was a contentious topic. In Britain, numerous actors from various backgrounds including natural history, acclimatisation, agriculture and economic ornithology converged on the bird, as contemporaries sought to calculate its economic cost and benefit to growers. Periodicals and newspapers provided an accessible and anonymous means of expression, through which the debate raged for over 50 years. By the end of the century, sparrows had been cast as detrimental to agriculture. Yet consensus was not achieved through new scientific methods, instruments, or changes in practice. This study instead argues that the rise and fall of scientific disciplines and movements paved the way for consensus on ''the sparrow question.'' The decline of natural history and acclimatisation stifled a raging debate, while the rising science of economic ornithology sought to align itself with agricultural interests: the latter overwhelmingly hostile to sparrows.
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Annals of Science , 2017
SUMMARY Modern methods of analysing biological materials, including protein and DNA sequencing, a... more SUMMARY Modern methods of analysing biological materials, including protein and DNA sequencing, are increasingly the objects of historical study. Yet twentieth-century taxonomic techniques have been overlooked in one of their most important contexts: agricultural botany. This paper addresses this omission by harnessing unexamined archival material from the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB), a British plant science organization. During the 1980s the NIAB carried out three overlapping research programmes in crop identification and analysis: electrophoresis, near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and machine vision systems. For each of these three programmes, contemporary economic, statutory and scientific factors behind their uptake by the NIAB are discussed. This approach reveals significant links between taxonomic practice at the NIAB and historical questions around agricultural research, intellectual property and scientific values. Such links are of further importance given that the techniques developed by researchers at the NIAB during the 1980s remain part of crop classification guidelines issued by international bodies today.
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Archives of Natural History , Apr 2015
Following the extirpation of the red squirrel from much of Scotland by the end of the eighteenth ... more Following the extirpation of the red squirrel from much of Scotland by the end of the eighteenth century, nineteenth-century naturalists strived to find evidence of its native Scottish status. As medieval accounts and Gaelic place names proved ambiguous, the true extent of the squirrel’s former habitat was a matter of some debate. While numerous reintroductions of the species were made from the late eighteenth century, general enthusiasm for the return of squirrel quickly turned to dismay, ultimately followed by persecution. If the squirrel originally represented a symbolic mission to rediscover a lost species, the physical animal itself fell below expectations. It became publically perceived as both economically and ecologically destructive. The squirrel was despised by foresters and landowners for damaging trees, while naturalists condemned the species for the destruction of bird’s eggs and nests. This article will investigate naturalist’s quests to rediscover the red squirrel, before examining changing attitudes to the species upon its reintroduction and gradual proliferation. This narrative will emerge through the works and correspondence of Scottish naturalist John Alexander Harvie-Brown (1844-1916) and The New Statistical Account of Scotland (1834-1845). The argument will be made that the red squirrel as an object of antiquarian curiosity initially made the species endearing to natural historians, as part of a wider fascination with extinct British fauna. However, the clash between naturalists’ established ornithological interests did little to endear the species to that community, leaving the red squirrel open to a policy of general persecution on economic grounds.
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Book Chapters by Matthew Holmes
Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain, 2018
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Prizes by Matthew Holmes
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Book Reviews by Matthew Holmes
Northern History, 2023
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Metascience , 2019
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Archives of Natural History , 2017
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The British Journal for the History of Science, 2016
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The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 90, No. 2., Jun 2015
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PhD Thesis by Matthew Holmes
The modern Biotech Age possesses a very particular set of characteristics: the use of recombinant... more The modern Biotech Age possesses a very particular set of characteristics: the use of recombinant DNA technology, a close relationship between academic science and industry and, in Britain, public hostility to genetically modified crops. Yet despite increasingly widespread recognition among historians of science that biotechnology has a long and multi-faceted history, there is no thorough account of the history of plant biotechnology in British agriculture. Harnessing previously unexamined archival sources at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB), John Innes Centre (JIC) and the Science Museum, this thesis uncovers a number of largely unexamined plant biotechnologies and discusses their uptake in British agriculture since the mid-twentieth century. In doing so, it raises several new insights for historians. Chapters One and Two demonstrate how two commercially successful biotechnologies, industrial hybridization and mutation breeding, found agricultural applications b...
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Books by Matthew Holmes
Now available at https://upittpress.org/books/9780822947936/.
Papers by Matthew Holmes
Book Chapters by Matthew Holmes
Prizes by Matthew Holmes
Book Reviews by Matthew Holmes
PhD Thesis by Matthew Holmes
Now available at https://upittpress.org/books/9780822947936/.