A family affair

Abstract

Abstract Certain families seem to breed great biologists. Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was, in his own time, equally as famous as his grandson. Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin’s defender, was President of the Royal Society, and so was his grandson, the Nobel laureate, Andrew Huxley. No less distinguished is the line descended from the physiologist, J. S. Haldane. His son, J.B. S. Haldane, was a founder of biochemical and population genetics, and became professor of genetics at University College, London. Haldane’s sister is the writer, Naomi Mitchison, and Avrion Mitchison is the youngest of her three sons. He is a leading immunologist and, at the time we spoke to him, was Professor of Zoology at University College, London. Murdoch, his older brother, is Professor of Zoology in Edinburgh, and the oldest brother, Dennis, recently retired as Professor of Bacteriology at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London.