Antoinette Sutto, Author at ��ϳԹ��Դ

History of Science Resource: HIV/AIDS Research

Antoinette Sutto — Mon, 06 May 2024 15:11:19 +0000

On October 13-16, 2016, ��ϳԹ��Դ hosted a scientific meeting about HIV/AIDS, “HIV/AIDS Research: Its History and Future.” The conference brought together prominent HIV/AIDS experts to share their thoughts on the past, present and future of AIDS research. Participants included NIAID director Anthony Fauci, co-discoverers of HIV Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Robert Gallo, and...

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Introducing the Matthew Meselson Collection

Antoinette Sutto — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 13:46:28 +0000

Matthew Meselson (1930-) is a molecular biologist and geneticist. He is best known for the Meselson-Stahl experiment, which he carried out with Franklin Stahl at Caltech in 1958. To understand the signficance of Meselson’s work, and why the CSHL Library & Archives is so thrilled to have this collection, it’s worth going into some detail...

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Anthony Fauci at “HIV/AIDS Research: its History and Future” (2016)

Antoinette Sutto — Fri, 05 May 2023 18:05:15 +0000

In October of 2016, CSHL hosted a meeting focused on HIV/AIDs research which brought together some of the most important researchers in this field. The long list of participants included Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022, president of the task force established in...

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The Exceptions: A Center for the Humanities event featuring Kate Zernike and Nancy Hopkins

Antoinette Sutto — Wed, 03 May 2023 15:07:43 +0000

On April 28, 2023, the Center for Humanities hosted a discussion of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kate Zernike’s book, The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science, which tells the story of sixteen female faculty members at MIT who quantified the discrimination faced by female scientists at their institution and forced a...

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CSHL Oral History Digitization: Preserving the History of Scientific Discoveries in Modern Biology

Antoinette Sutto — Tue, 02 May 2023 13:56:05 +0000

The ��ϳԹ��Դ Library and Archives has a wealth of analog audio and video material related to the history of biology and medicine in the twentieth century. This material includes oral history interviews, audio recordings from scientific workshops at the Banbury Conference Center, and CSHL promotional materials from the 1980s. To preserve this...

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Plant Science, Biotechnology and Agriculture: a History of Science on Long Island, 1900-2020

Antoinette Sutto — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 16:54:42 +0000

With the generous support of the Gardiner Foundation, the CSHL Library and Archives has completed a significant history of science project, an exhibition entitled Plant Science, Biotechnology and Agriculture: a History of Science on Long Island, 1900-2020. The exhibition can be seen here. The exhibition explores the relationship between agriculture and basic scientific research and...

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Coughing and Cigarettes: Datura stramonium and the Treatment of Asthma

Antoinette Sutto — Mon, 03 Oct 2022 14:27:06 +0000

In April of 1937, a botanist at the University of Arizona College of Agriculture named J. J. Thornber wrote to Carnegie Institution biologist A. F. Blakeslee for information about medical uses of Datura stramonium. This plant was the focus of Blakeslee’s research in the 1930s, and his scientific colleagues frequently wrote to him to discuss...

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Exploring the Norton Zinder Collection: Finding the Public During the Recombinant DNA Controversy, 1970-1985

Antoinette Sutto — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 18:57:21 +0000

The development of recombinant DNA technology in the early 1970s led to a public debate over the risks and rewards of this new technique that lasted nearly a decade. The phrase “the public” was used over and over again in the course of this discussion. Critics of recombinant DNA experiments repeatedly accused scientists of endangering...

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Estimating the Risks of New Technologies: Evidence from the 1970s

Antoinette Sutto — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 15:47:58 +0000

Humans are not good at calculating risks, and that makes the dangers of new technologies difficult to assess. Besides, even if we were better at estimating risk, the difficulty of predicting future technological developments makes it nearly impossible to know in advance which technologies truly pose a threat to us and which do not. This...

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An American “plot” : the 1970s moratorium on recombinant DNA research

Antoinette Sutto — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 16:32:17 +0000

How do national boundaries and national differences shape how science is done? Scientists often collaborate with colleagues in other countries. At the same time, national pride and geopolitics can create intense international rivalries, for example between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But the impulse to see scientists in other...

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From the “Ha-ha” file: L. Douglas DeNike on the Dangers of Recombinant DNA Research

Antoinette Sutto — Fri, 12 Nov 2021 17:01:41 +0000

Rockefeller University biologist Norton Zinder kept a file of letters and clippings labeled the “Ha-ha” file. Some of the items were things intended to be funny — biology-related jokes from colleagues, for example. There were also articles, fliers and memos that Zinder found funny but whose authors were in fact dead serious. One of these...

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A Brave New World of Genetic Engineering in the 1960s

Antoinette Sutto — Wed, 10 Nov 2021 15:18:33 +0000

The controversy in the 1970s over the potential risks and dangers of recombinant DNA research involved fears, suspicions and antagonisms that ran in several directions at once. Scientists working with rDNA tools were initially concerned about safety to lab workers and/or the release of potentially dangerous organisms into the environment. Their concern was such that...

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“Letting it ride”: The case of the Aoki Lab

Antoinette Sutto — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 20:38:59 +0000

In October of 1976, a memorandum was drawn up to address what were described as “some basic problems at the National Cancer Institute.” A series of irregularities in the lab of Dr. Tadao Aoki were cited in support of “rather deplorable conditions at NCI.”1 What was happening in the Aoki Lab? The first few issues...

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Recombinant DNA and Biological Warfare

Antoinette Sutto — Wed, 20 Oct 2021 20:52:49 +0000

This letter written by biologist David Baltimore in 1975 illustrates the connections between the development of recombinant DNA technology in the 1970s and international politics. Baltimore describes how he had stated in public that there ought to be an international treaty governing biological warfare. He then found out that there already was such a treaty,...

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Exploring the Norton Zinder Collection: Getting Scooped

Antoinette Sutto — Mon, 04 Oct 2021 21:17:17 +0000

It often happens that two different researchers or two different teams come up with the same result at the same time. Given the emphasis on priority in scientific publishing, it can be tricky to figure out what to do in this type of situation. Does the winner take all? Should the two investigators or groups...

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Cold Spring Harbor and German Eugenics in the 1930s

Antoinette Sutto — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 18:08:59 +0000

The Eugenics Records Office at Cold Spring Harbor is well known as a center of American eugenics research in the early twentieth century under CSHL director Charles Davenport. Less well known are the connections between Davenport, American eugenics and German “racial hygiene” in the 1920s and 1930s. A series of documents in the Carnegie Institution...

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Exploring the Norton Zinder Collection: Penicillin, Auxotrophic Mutants, and Tricks of Memory

Antoinette Sutto — Mon, 13 Sep 2021 14:26:53 +0000

The story of science is often narrated as a clear progression of experiment and discovery, even though historians of science have pointed out that the reality was and is often much messier. The significance of a particular question or experiment is not always fully evident at the time, notes might be sloppy or incomplete (or...

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Cold Spring Harbor and Nazi Germany: A Jewish Scholar Seeks a Position in the United States

Antoinette Sutto — Tue, 07 Sep 2021 17:18:13 +0000

In December of 1938, Dr. Helene Meyer-Unger wrote to Albert Blakeslee, the director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Genetics at Cold Spring Harbor. She was in New York City and wanted to come and visit the lab and meet Blakeslee and some of the other researchers there. Meyer-Unger described herself as “a German…In 1936...

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Antoinette Sutto, Author at ���ϳԹ���Դ