- British physiologist,
geneticist, and author of popular science books. In 1936 he showed the
genetic link between haemophilia and colour blindness.
Haldane was born and educated at Oxford. In 1933 he became professor
of genetics at University College, London. He emigrated to India 1957
in protest at the Anglo-French invasion of Suez and was appointed director
of the Genetics and Biometry Laboratory in Orissa. He became a naturalized
Indian citizen in 1961.
In 1924 Haldane produced the first proof that enzymes obey the laws
of thermodynamics.
Haldane investigated how carbon dioxide in the bloodstream of human
beings enables the muscles to regulate breathing under different conditions.
During World War II, in 1942, Haldane, who often used his own body in
biochemical experiments, spent two days in a submarine to test an air-purifying
system.
Haldane was convinced that natural selection and not mutation is the
driving force behind evolution. In 1932, he estimated for the first
time the rate of mutation of the human gene and worked out the effect
of recurrent harmful mutations on a population. He is supposed to have
remarked: 'I'd lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins.'
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