A Dominant Character - Review

“When JBS Haldane died in 1964, in Bhubaneswar, he was an Indian scientist. He had a passport, but he also had a deep and abiding love for the country’, reads the blurb in this fascinating biography.

Haldane’s move to India was an eventual act in his brisk life. A geneticist and firebrand, Haldane wrote his first scientific papers in the trenches of the First World War. A card-carrying member of the Communist Party, he went to Spain to fight the Fascists during the civil war. Haldane was under heavy suspicion of being a spy for the Soviets; courted trouble and ticked off the establishment repeatedly. All this and more have been put together in this sparkling life story. 

‘A Dominant Character – The Radical Science and Restless Politics of JBS Haldane" by Samanth Subramanian (Simon & Schuster, New Delhi) examines the radical research and writing of scientists and philosophers. Haldane’s immense contribution to genetics and Evolutional biology is legendary. He was the first to calculate the rate at which mutations accumulate in genes, and also predicted in-vitro fertilization.

Author of "Following Fish: Travels around the Indian Coast" and "This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War", Subramanian is a writer and journalist. His book on Sri Lanka shortlisted for Samuel Johnson non-fiction prize and Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize.

Haldane's contributions to genetics are extraordinary. In tandem with his communist beliefs, he made us think about how science and politics intersect, and how genetics continues to throw up great ethical and political posers. He was a rare breed of scientists — deeply involved in politics and deeply committed to popularizing science and opening up scientific research to the public.

In 1957, Haldane and wife Helen Spurway (his former student and biologist) moved to India permanently and took up a professorship and a readership, respectively, at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Calcutta. Haldane had visited India many times and made a number of friends in the country, including PC Mahalanobis, the director of ISI.

He was keen on researching across a range of topics, including Indian plant and animal life. He also had an abiding interest in Hinduism and its core philosophy. Hailing Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s scientific-socialist vision for India, Haldane viewed the country as “a vast experiment to see how a wise application of science could advance the lives of hundreds of millions of people”. In the backdrop of the destruction of democratic norms by Stalin in the Soviet Union, India “gave him hope” because it was a secular nation that encouraged discussion and debate. All these charming details are part of this 380- page book.

The book delves into Haldane’s communist politics and his many years spent in India, including his association with the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata and the Genetics and Biometry Laboratory in Bhubaneswar.

Scrupulously researched by means of archival material from different sources including Haldane’s own papers, made available to him by the scientist’s grand nieces and nephews, this biography charts the course of Haldane’s tumultuous life. The accounts of his formative years in the book make for interesting reading.

Haldane’s India stint was audacious and unpredictable, as the book says. The bureaucratic mechanism at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata frustrated him and he rebelled against the hierarchies put in place at ISI by PC Mahalanobis. The two friends had a falling out and Haldane quit the ISI in 1961. Subsequently he went on to join the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research at Calcutta, but red-tape stifled him there too. He eventually moved to Bhubaneswar, accepting the invitation of then Odisha chief minister Biju Patnaik to set up a new genetics laboratory. 

The biography maps one of the greatest minds of modern science and dexterously remembers the life and brilliance of Haldane and his many contributions. Subramanian’s book is an outstanding portrayal of Haldane. This hardback is a major contribution to modern intellectual history just as it is perceptive. 

Unlike previous biographers, Subramanian does an admirable job describing Haldane’s life – his daredevilry and love of throwing grenades despite abhorring war, and how his military experiences in Iraq and India shaped his worldview. 

Haldane returned from World War I and plunged into biochemistry, using mathematics to describe how enzymes worked, even writing the first textbook on enzymes. He then turned to evolutionary biology, using mathematics to reconcile it with Mendelian genetics. 

His work on how genes spread, how the peppered moth variant evolved, why harmful mutations like those underlying sickle-cell anemia persisted and in establishing genetic maps for hemophilia and color-blindness remain classics. Subramanian is also an able science communicator, especially since Haldane worked long before we had any idea what an enzyme or a gene was in physical terms. 

Aside from shedding light on Haldane’s contributions to genetics and evolutionary biology—he was the first to calculate the rate at which mutations occur and accumulate in genes—the book illuminates Haldane’s inner world—his towering intellect, his radical vision of a society, his provocative philosophy, and his attempts to wrestle with scientific progress.

 "A Dominant Character" is an enthralling biography about Haldane, whom the philosopher C.P. Snow called the “most learned scientist of his time”. What made Haldane one of the most famous scientists was his writings in science and politics. The book is eminently readable and is an incisive analysis of Haldane’s era when the realms of scientific knowledge were too little. Just as Haldane’s life was full of complexity, this biography is teeming with the varied life of a great scientist.