The Rockefeller Foundation and spectroscopy research: the programs at Chicago and Utrecht.

Abstract

The introduction of new experimental or analytical tools into programs of scientific research can be the spur for advancing and deepening scientific understanding. In the life sciences, for example, the use of the microscope to examine cells from organisms that previously had been studied only by genetic crossing allowed changes in chromosomal organization to be correlated with the inheritance of specific physical features, thereby stimulating the elaboration of new theories of evolutionary change. Similarly, the use of chemical and physical manipulations on embryos whose developmental changes had been meticulously followed only with microscopic techniques permitted new types of insights into embryological changes and opened up new categories of questions about the regulation of differentiation and development. Decisions to employ new techniques and strike out in novel and uncertain directions have generally been individual ones made by single investigators in response to their own perceived research needs. In the mid-1930s the Natural Sciences division of the Rockefeller Foundation, under the direction of Warren Weaver, began a major initiative to improve research in the biological sciences by bringing the tools of the physical sciences into biological investigations.' At that time, the Rockefeller Foundation had made sup-