This is the post-print version of a published paper. When referencing, please cite the published paper:

Helen Anne Curry, 'From Garden Biotech to Garage Biotech: Amateur Experimental

Biology in Historical Perspective', British Journal for the History of Science 47 (2014): 539–565.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007087413000411

From Garden Biotech to Garage Biotech: Amateur Experimental Biology in Historical Perspective Helen Anne Curry Department of History and Philosophy of Science University of Cambridge Free School Lane Cambridge CB2 3RH hac44@cam.ac.uk Abstract: This paper describes the activities of amateur plant breeders and their application of various methods and technologies derived from genetics research over the course of the 20th century. These ranged from straightforward application of selection and hybridization to more interventionist approaches such as radiation treatment to induce genetic mutations and chemical manipulation of chromosomes. I argue that these activities share characteristics with both 21st century do-it-yourself (DIY) biology, a recent upswing in amateur experimental biology, and with other amateur science and technology of the 20th century. The characterization of amateur plant breeding as amateur experimental biology offers a corrective to a dominant narrative within the history of biology, in which the turn to experimental research in the early 20th century is thought to have served as an obvious dividing line between amateur and professional activities. Considered alongside other better-known amateur efforts, it also suggests that we might gain something by taking a more unified approach to the study of amateur science and technology. Acknowledgments: I thank Hasok Chang, Daniel Kevles, Bruce Lewenstein, Alistair Sponsel, Bruno Strasser, and two anonymous referees for their comments on this work at various stages.

1

From Garden Biotech to Garage Biotech: Amateur Experimental Biology in Historical Perspective

In 2008 Jason Bobe and MacKenzie Cowell, two young professionals working at the edges of the

Boston-Cambridge biotech community, caused quite a stir when they came together to found

DIYbio, a network dedicated to making the materials and methods of molecular biology accessible

outside the worlds of academic and industrial research. DIYbio tapped into a surprisingly large

reservoir of interest among a general audience in learning how to wield the tools of modern

biotechnology.1 This interest was driven by everything from basic curiosity to artistic ambitions to

humanitarian goals but centred largely on mastering methods of DNA manipulation. Membership in

the organization numbered around 800 by late 2009, with participants around the world swapping

information on DNA extraction, collaborating to develop inexpensive equivalents of high-tech

laboratory equipment, and pooling resources to establish communal laboratory spaces. The

movement as a whole drew significant media attention. Since then much of the fervour has died

down, but in the United States there are thriving DIYbio groups in the Bay Area, Boston, and New

York City.2

From the start, participants and observers sought to make sense of the movement by

invoking historical precedents for community-based amateur experimentation. For many, homebrew

computing was the closest antecedent, with the connection made explicit in the adoption of

identifiers such as ‘garage biologists’ or ‘biohackers’.3 Other do-it-yourself communities that DIYbio

participants identified as close parallels included radio and rocketry amateurs.4 These groups had

similarly appropriated new technologies for their own entertainment and edification beginning in the

mid-20th century, developing networks of participants and sophisticated tools and methods of their

own in the process. (Amateur rocketry also conveniently called to mind the precedent for amateurs

to be working with potentially dangerous technologies and to be successfully self-regulating.) Still

2

others likened the general milieu of DIYbio to a bygone era in which, in the words of one Bay-Area

journalist, ‘key discoveries were made by solitary scientists toiling away in their basements.’5 In a

2009 interview, the DIYbio.org founder Bobe noted ‘[W]e’re returning to the roots of biology, when

scientists had laboratories in their parlors…[I]t was parlor science.’6 These comparisons, to hackers,

tinkerers, and gentleman scientists, have proved fruitful for scholars hoping to better characterize

and historicize do-it-yourself biology within the long trajectory of scientific and technological

development, especially the place of amateur practice within this history.7

To all commenters, whether participant or observer, it has seemed evident that this

efflorescence of amateur experimentation in biology is unprecedented – hence the need to look to

elsewhere for acceptable comparisons. A brief look at the literature on 20th century amateur science

and technology confirms that this is also the perspective within the field of history of science and

technology. There have been numerous studies of amateur experimenters, DIYers, and tinkerers,

which have offered characterizations of their adoption of electronic technologies ranging from

radios and television to electric guitars to personal computers and in some cases their attempts to

reproduce research in the physical sciences such as nuclear power and rocket propulsion. These have

emphasized such themes as the essential role of amateur activities in the development of a

commercial market for new technologies; the intersection of recreation with the mastery of scientific

or technical skills; and especially the development of hobbyist communities that proved critical for

sharing and circulating tools and information.8 Nowhere within this rich literature on amateur

experimentation or amateur technical manipulation (i.e., tinkering) – a literature that makes a strong

case for the importance of these traditions in many kinds of scientific and technological

development – does one find examples from the biological sciences. Although amateurs are

acknowledged to have on occasion played a role in 20th century biology as participant observers (as

in the case of amateur ornithology) or specimen collectors, historians and other scholars of science

3

have assumed that they have not been experimenters.9 With this as a backdrop, 21st century DIYbio

indeed appears to be quite an unusual phenomenon, best defined in relation to other non-biology

amateur traditions.

It is possible, however, to view DIYbio in quite a different light: to see it not as a novelty but

as the latest iteration in a long tradition of amateur experimental biology. In this paper, I consider

the activities of amateur plant breeders and especially their application of techniques and

technologies derived from experimental biological research over the course of the 20th century. Their

methods ranged from seemingly straightforward methods of selection and hybridization long

familiar to breeders, to comparatively interventionist approaches such as radiation treatment to

induce genetic mutations and chemical manipulation of chromosomes – methods that they adopted

straight from the genetics laboratory. I argue that these activities share characteristics with both 21st

century DIYbio and with other amateur science or tinkerer cultures of the 20th century already

recognized by historians of science and technology.

By amateur plant breeders I refer to those who did not engage in breeding as their

profession; thus amateurs included some individuals who were highly skilled at breeding, possessing

an expertise that may have rivalled professional expertise, as well as novices. I examine their

activities in relation to two kinds of professionals, among whom there existed considerable overlap

at various times during the 20th century: commercial or other plant breeders whose primary

professional responsibility was plant improvement (a group I refer to as professional breeders) and

scientists including geneticists and other biological researchers engaged in experimental research. As

I describe in this paper, amateur plant breeders interacted with and drew ideas from the latter group

especially throughout the 20th century, applying recently developed genetic techniques and

technologies to produce new varieties of flowers and crops. Driven in some cases by different goals,

they attempted projects that biologists and professional breeders did not and at times created

4

meanings and markets for genetic techniques that might not otherwise have existed. Some saw

themselves as contributors to a collective body of knowledge, while others considered their

experimentation a rewarding leisure activity that they sustained without regard to economic or

scientific payoff. And there was to some extent a community of such experimenters: participation

ranged from formal membership in societies dedicated to amateur breeding, especially of specialty

flowers, to simply sharing results in a gardening magazine or local newspaper. In these

characteristics, amateur breeders closely resembled other amateur experimenters and tinkerers of the

20th century.

I see two implications of this history, one specific and clearly supported by the evidence

offered here, and a second more speculative. First, my categorizing amateur plant breeding as

amateur experimentation offers a corrective to a dominant narrative within the history of biology.

Much of the literature in the history of the life sciences has taken for granted that the turn to

experimental biology in the early 20th century served as an obvious dividing line between amateur

and professional activities. For example, it is generally understood that tensions arose especially

where a laboratory or specialized tools and techniques did not distinguish a professional biologist or

naturalist from other practitioners – hence the focus on the relationships between amateurs and

professionals in natural historical study.10 Other historians have challenged the overarching narrative

in which experimental practices dominated natural historical practices in 20th century biology, seeing

for example the continuation of the naturalist tradition across even experimental cultures.11 Here I

take on a different aspect of the given story, suggesting that experimental biology did not exclude

amateur participants. Rather, upon looking more closely, it is possible to find amateurs engaged in

experimental biology throughout the 20th century, and not just in preparing microscope slides or

imitating the laboratory experiments of professional scientists, but also in attempting to adapt as-yet

experimental methods to meet their own aims and agendas.

5

Such a perspective renders 21st century developments in amateur experimental biology less

novel and surprising – this is of course where the very specific argument of the paper takes us. But

there is I think a still larger, though rather more speculative, point to be made. Because these

amateur experimental activities were directed primarily at mastering the techniques and technologies

of genetic manipulation, they bear many commonalities with the activities of other recreational

technologists (e.g., ham radio users or amateur rocketeers), as I note above. To date, most studies

that have considered the place of amateur practice in the history of science and technology have

focused on small communities or narrow areas of interest, whether astronomy or ornithology or

radio broadcasting, and the relationship of these to professional research activities, much as I do in

this essay. There are some exceptions, as in Rachel Maines’ history of what she calls ‘hedonizing

technologies’, referring to the pursuit of work-like activities for pleasure; and in the growing

attention to varieties of ‘civic science’ and the long history of lay participation in scientific

observation.12 Yet these are still only a partial accounting of the range of activities that might be

categorized as amateur science and technology and their commonalities. By highlighting the parallels

between amateur biological experimentation and other very diverse amateur practices of the 20th

century, the history I present here suggests that we might gain something by taking a more unified

approach to the study of amateur science and technology. I will return to this idea toward the

conclusion of the essay.

The history of plant breeding provides a particularly rich set of sources through which to

observe these amateur experimental practices. Beginning especially in response to the marvellous

new fruits and flowers produced by the horticulturalist Luther Burbank in California in the 1890s

and continuing through the end of the 20th century, news reports, magazine articles, and gardening

guides encouraged amateur breeders to take up the techniques and tools of plant science and

genetics as these emerged. As I describe here, these could be as straightforward as instructions on

6

cross-pollinating lilies and as unusual as extracting radium from watch dials to induce mutations.

That amateur gardeners hoped to and did put these techniques to use is attested to by their

published accounts, their correspondence with scientists, and news reports of their work. My history

of these activities focuses on a few techniques: hybridization through cross-pollination, use of the

chemical colchicine, and induced mutation.

‘Be Your Own Burbank’

Before turning to later and more overtly experimental methods of plant breeding (in that they

involved the adoption of novel and as-yet-unproven techniques from genetics) and their adoption by

amateurs, I want first to consider the status of plant breeding at the turn of the century. The

emergence of a group of professional breeders gave rise to a notion of amateur plant breeding, and

especially to the sense that this could be pursued as a rewarding leisure activity or hobby. The

engagement of these (usually self-identified) amateurs in selection and hybridization to produce

flower, fruit, or vegetable novelties – often with explicit reference to the examples set by

professional breeders – set the stage for the later adoption of less tested methods advanced by

experimental biologists. In describing how and why laypersons engaged in plant breeding around the

turn of the 20th century, I draw attention to a few key features of this practice: the hybrid

characterization of amateur breeding as both leisure and scientific labour, the application of methods

newly sanctioned by growing professional communities, the development of a community of

amateur practitioners inclined to share methods and experiences, and, finally, the adoption of

‘experiment’ as a term to describe breeding-related activities. Although in looking back from the 21st

century we might not be inclined to consider the activity of hybridizing and selecting flower or fruit

varieties as ‘experimental’, many amateurs adopted the designation of ‘experiment’ in large part to

indicate the uncertainty of the outcome of their work as well as its involving an intervention into the

7

expected natural order.

I begin by way of an example: in 1910, an amateur plant breeder from the suburbs of Detroit

wrote to the editors of Country Life, a monthly magazine devoted to rural living, to report on the

results of twelve years’ worth of what he described as ‘experiments’ in vegetable breeding. ‘I have

produced several new varieties of tomatoes which seem to me better than I have ever tasted’, David

Beyer began. ‘And I believe I have succeeded in getting into them some of the “blood” of eggplants

and peppers’. Beyer described these as his ‘combination tomatoes’, produced through a process of

grafting the branches of tomato plants onto those of eggplants and peppers.13 The editors in their

response expressed scepticism as to whether Beyer’s tomatoes were truly combinatory in the manner

he suggested. Not only did they ‘not detect any flavor of eggplant or pepper’ in the sample tomatoes

sent by Beyer, but, as they pointed out, hybrids were rarely if ever produced by grafting and nearly

always by cross-pollination. Yet they did not want to discourage interest in this work, and so took

the opportunity to call attention to the ‘world of fascinating experiment… open to every amateur

who wishes to produce new and better varieties of fruits, vegetables, and flowers’. A portable

greenhouse, handbook of plant breeding, and a vision of what one hoped to create were the only

tools they deemed truly necessary. ‘Don’t gamble and don’t scatter’, they concluded, ‘Study scientific

methods’.14

The letters of both Beyer and the editors of Country Life – centred on the methods and aims

of amateur plant breeding – reflected both the growing popular interest in plant cultivation in the

United States at the turn of the century and its intersection with an increasingly professional and

technical culture of plant improvement. Gardening and plant cultivation had become a more widely

practiced and more diverse set of activities in the late 1800s. This expansion had been encouraged by

horticulturalists, reformers, and also a growing commercial seed and nursery trade over the course of

several decades.15 In a few major cities, horticultural societies organized around mid-century and

8

promoted garden culture through exhibitions and other outreach activities. Such societies were

decidedly upper class in their membership, populated especially by educated men who took up

horticulture (typically understood as specialty plant or garden cultivation) as an activity that

demonstrated both their refinement and their good character.16 Yet gardening also democratized in

these years, reaching a more middle-class audience, for example as transportation and

communication networks brought Midwestern towns into the range of both mass-circulation

publications and the East-coast seed and nursery industry.17 In the decades after the Civil War, it

became a widespread and popular national activity, encouraged by a mass of new horticultural

publications and supported especially by the growth of suburbs with their attendant ideal of a

detached home and ample yard.18

The late 19th century had also witnessed a boom in attention directed to plant breeding. This

boom drew equally on emerging scientific ideas and market opportunities. In the mid-19th-century

United States, breeding already encompassed a diverse set of interests: it was a business pursuit, a

cultivator’s necessity, and a leisure activity, a task undertaken by seed- and nurserymen, by farmers,

and by gentlemen cultivators.19 Late in the century, however, government funding for crop

innovation and improvement generated impetus for breeding work at experiment stations and land-

grant colleges, and markets for improved seeds and plants consolidated. With this greater

institutionalization and economic demand came greater professionalization, and soon an increasingly

professional group of breeders emerged with a commitment to improving methods much as plant

and animal varieties.20 The rediscovery of Mendel in 1900, with the acceptance and even celebration

of Mendelian laws as the key to predictable breeding, encouraged these trends. It also encouraged

the idea of breeding as a science and a profession, involving theoretical underpinnings and methods

that could be mastered only with appropriate training.21

Although breeding was increasingly described as a professional activity, it nonetheless

9

remained appealing and accessible to practitioners with minimal experience. In light of the

increasing number of trained professionals producing fruits and grains for market within the

purview of government institutions or commercial enterprises, a notion of amateur breeding

emerged. This was an activity to be pursued largely for leisure though it did also carry the potential

for economic reward. For those who doubted what could be accomplished by the novice in this

area, there was a ready model for achievement: the best known commercial plant breeder, the wildly

successful Luther Burbank, was well known to have been self-taught.22 Burbank received an

extraordinary amount of celebratory attention in the American press beginning in the 1890s for his

fruit and flower innovations, plants that included such marvels as the pitless prune, the white

blackberry, and the spineless cactus, in addition to more straightforward achievements in fruit, nut,

and flower breeding.23 As such, he was an easy reference point for those hoping to underscore the

methods and rewards of plant improvement to a general audience.

Many Americans celebrated Burbank as a pioneer in the science of breeding, and, like other

pioneers, they considered him to have blazed a trail that they could follow. Books and articles

produced about Burbank in the early decades of the 20th century encouraged amateurs to try their

own hand at ‘burbanking’ plants. These accounted for a significant portion of early guides to

amateur plant breeding. ‘Every Man His Own Burbank’, one article declared.24 ‘Every Woman Her

Own Burbank’, countered another.25 The take-home lesson of such articles was clear. An ambitious

amateur, using simple tools and methods, could imitate Burbank’s many successes in fruit and

flower breeding at home.26 This was an activity Burbank himself reportedly endorsed. ‘A single

reader of this magazine may develop a new plant, or so improve an old one as to make of it a great

and lasting benefit to the race’, he was said to have told one biographer. According to Burbank, ‘the

modern amateur plant-breeder’ could with patience and attention ‘produce remarkable results’.27

Those who pitched plant breeding to the public, some of whom were amateur breeders

10

themselves, agreed that it was an activity accessible to anyone with the time and patience to pursue

it.28 The materials needed to participate were minimal: a very little space to garden and a couple of

plants were the only absolute essentials. Although an image from Garden Magazine depicted an

expansive and open country garden as the ideal haven of ‘the amateur Burbank’, readers elsewhere

were assured this would be unnecessary.29 Suggested alternate garden locales ranged from the

apartment window-ledge to the ‘cooped-up city back yard’.30 Amateurs were encouraged to invest in

a minimal toolkit. Although someone as skilled as Burbank needed only his fingertips for

transferring pollen and a grafting knife, it was thought that most beginners would also benefit from

items such as a penknife, jeweller’s pincers, a magnifying lens, a fine brush and a saucer – these were

the tools for cross-pollinating plants in order to hybridize – and shears and a pan of wax and brush

– for those who would also graft.31 The methods provided in these magazines ranged from very

basic steps, such as transferring pollen between plants with a brush and waiting for seed to set, to

more complex tasks such as grafting seedlings onto to older tree stock to speed up the time to

fruiting.

Amateur breeders who attempted to produce new varieties through selection and

hybridization were eager to report their results. Some, like Beyer discussing his eggplant-tomatoes,

wrote to the same publications that had offered instructions in the first place. For example, one

amateur wrote in 1903 to American Gardening to discuss his ten years’ hobby of hybridization in

which he focused on the development of a hardier orange.32 The amateur William Haynes pointed

out in a contribution to Good Housekeeping how ‘very simple a thing amateur experiments can be’ and

described his own Burbank-style work in crossing snapdragons, using a fine brush to transfer pollen.

The task Haynes deemed ‘no great work’ and he encouraged other gardeners to pursue plant

breeding as he did. It was, to his mind, ‘a game for gardens’ and he asserted that, as his experiences

and the simplicity of the methods demonstrated, one did not have to be ‘either a scientist or an

11

expert gardener to become a plant breeder’.33

The ‘game’ was not always pursued solely for pleasure, however. Some amateurs aspired to

improve plants in ways that might prove profitable, as in the hope of developing better-tasting

tomatoes or cold-resistant oranges. No doubt many hoped to take advantage of the growing market

for fruits and vegetable innovations that was frequently described as being open to breeders at all

skill levels. ‘[I]f a new plant of sterling merit crowns one’s efforts, there is always some opportunity

to dispose of it for a good price, a satisfaction independent of that of having attained success in

one’s hobby’, encouraged a guide to hybridizing that appeared in Garden Magazine.34 In light of such

advice it is no wonder that an amateur like Beyer would take pains to describe the merits of his

tomatoes in such detail, noting that they would be ‘excellent for all cooking purposes, e.g., canning,

catsup, jelly, etc., since they are not watery and contain few seeds. They are admirable for eating

raw… They ship well’.35 Another subset of amateurs aspired to educate themselves, or as breeding

promoters emphasized most often, to contribute to the store of human knowledge. The Burbank

enthusiast Henry Williams believed that every breeding attempt was an ‘experiment’ that would

produce ‘results sure to be surprising and fascinating’.36 Amateurs were to consider themselves a

valuable part of a growing science, for professionals could not possibly imagine much less conduct

every potential cross. ‘Every country home should be... a sort of experiment station’, admonished

one author in the sport and outdoors magazine Outing, ‘not only for the interest there is in it but for

the contribution to the public. In horticulture just now we need a lot of new things, and someone

must either discover or create them’. He advised his readers, ‘Be Your Own Burbank’, but clearly

thought they could be Burbanks for the world as well.37 In short, amateurs were encouraged to take

up, and indeed did take up, breeding for various reasons: as a form of leisure activity, in hopes of

turning a profit, or as way of gaining scientific knowledge or contributing to horticultural science.

Most of the Burbank-derived articles presented techniques that had been used for over a

12

century, now celebrated and discussed more widely.38 The characterization of breeding practices

transformed rapidly in the first decades of the 20th century, however, especially as Mendelian

genetics – a set of ideas linked to new experimental approaches in biological research – came to be

seen as the cutting edge of breeding work at American institutions. The effect of Mendelism on

amateur practice was less extensive than that of Burbank, likely in part because some professional

breeders deployed Mendelism as a tool for demarcating their activities from those of farmers or

other improvers.39

Still, the application of Mendelian laws was not always seen to be beyond the purview of the

amateur. Some tried to make this clear by translating new terms into more accessible language. As a

1911 article in the general interest monthly Everybody's Magazine declared, science ‘had solved Mr.

Burbank’ and the mystery of his abilities in the garden. The author accused scientists of confusing

the public by hiding the discovery ‘under a bushel of big words like homozygote, heterozygote,

recessives, and so on’ and thus did his best to make clear to his readers what exactly the new

Mendelian laws meant.40 Others fought the perception of Mendelism as an impenetrable field by

describing their success in applying its rules. William Cockerell, a self-declared amateur gardener

who had ‘long been interested in breeding experiments’ recounted in 1914 how he had found in the

field one afternoon a red sunflower and thought he might be able to make a stable new variety out

of it. The only thing to do, he declared, was to make crosses of it, ‘to know whether the red would

be dominant or recessive’.41 He made the crosses, calculated the ratios of colours in subsequent

generations, and claimed to have by this method eventually produced not only a fairly constant red

flower but also a pink one by cross-pollinating his red product with a white flower. These feats he

attributed to his knowledge of the laws of heredity, which had enabled him to ‘predict in advance

just what would happen’.42 The lesson was clear, whether or not the story was entirely true:

Mendelian genetics need not unduly intimidate the amateur.

13

Articles describing how to hybridize plants to create new varieties remained a standard of

horticultural and gardening magazines in subsequent decades. Improvement through hybridization

was also the stock-in-trade of amateur flower societies as these organized in the 1920s and 30s.43

Members of the American Iris Society or the Empire State Gladiolus Society, for example, charted

progress in flower cultivation and especially breeding through exhibitions and in writing;

publications of these societies in particular make evident the participants’ expertise.44 Within their

chosen floral subfields, these individuals could easily be considered experts as well as amateurs. This

was noted even by the United States Department of Agriculture’s chief floriculturist Samuel

Emsweller. In 1938, he attributed the majority of recent improvements in ornamentals to the efforts

of amateurs, especially with ‘the garden club movement... an active stimulant to flower breeding’ as

well as societies dedicated to specific flowers. He indicated that the USDA would bring new

attention to flower breeding, spurred by these amateur achievements and by the knowledge that

many Americans were sure to support the work.45

Efforts continued to be made to reach new audiences as well, to encourage anyone with a

flower garden to see it as a site for experimentation. Readers of Popular Science Monthly in 1937 for

example encountered instructions on how to become a ‘Plant Wizard’, producing new plants and

novelties with just a few simple and inexpensive tools. According to the author, it would be no

trouble for the amateur working in his garden to follow the procedures; the challenge would be

learning the basic Mendelian patterns of inheritance and the relation of these to cross-fertilization

and inbreeding. The article echoed many of the same sentiments found forty years earlier in

Burbank-inspired articles: the accessibility of the methods, the experimental nature of the activity,

and the potential for significant rewards. ‘The act of cross-pollination can be accomplished by

anybody...’ the author emphasized. ‘The tools are simple. The laboratory and test plot may be a few

square feet in the home yard. One might even produce a new geranium variety in a window box’.46

14

Welcome to ‘Mutatia’

Although the techniques of hybridization and cross-fertilization remained mainstays of both

professional and amateur breeding they did not continue to generate headlines at the rate they had in

the first decades of the 20th century. Subsequent waves of gardeners-turned-experimenters found

inspiration in new techniques, some of which came straight from the workbench of the experimental

genetics laboratory without having first been vetted by professional breeders. It is in these activities

that the links between amateur breeding and other 20th century tinkerer or amateur experimental

cultures are most evident. Those amateur breeders who took up the use of x-rays, chemicals, and

radioisotopes such as I describe here were well aware that neither professional scientists nor

breeders had yet determined the most effective ways to wield these tools. Such uncertainty was not

discouraging, but rather accounted for much of the interest in amateur experimentation. Amateurs

were eager to test and explore the possibilities created by these tools, and to share their experiences

with one another. Although they differed in the extent to which they sought financial gain or to

make intellectual contributions through their work, most did agree that they were venturing into the

unknown – and that doing so could be its own reward. The responses of professional scientists

suggests still further the extent and purposefulness of this amateur engagement: rather than

universally dismiss amateur practice as inconsequential, some scientists engaged amateurs to aid in

testing techniques as widely as possibly (akin to a ‘citizen science’ initiative), while others went public

with their denouncement of amateur experimentation as dangerous and misguided.

The earliest example of a new experimental method introduced into plant breeding is that of

x-ray irradiation. After several researchers demonstrated in the late 1920s the effect of x-rays and

other radiation in inducing mutations, breeders too began to investigate the x-ray as a potential tool

for the production of new varieties. Mutations, after all, were the source of variations that could set

15

an individual plant apart from its ancestors; if the x-ray could produce these in abundance, perhaps it

would speed up the work of plant breeders who would no longer have to hunt for rare variations in

the field.47

As professionals pursued this lead, so too did amateurs. Arlie Toulouse of Laguna Beach,

California, was one such amateur, ‘a musician by trade and a botanist by hobby’, who found the idea

of x-ray breeding particularly appealing. In the late 1930s, Toulouse took part of his garden hobby to

the Santa Ana hospital, where x-ray operators agreed to irradiate a collection of his seeds and bulbs.

These he used for the ‘more than 100 definite experiments’ carried out in his small garden,

experiments whose primary aim he declared was to produce better food and more beautiful

flowers.48 Another like-minded amateur had a more specific goal: breeding a ‘pure golden yellow

carrot’. In the late 1940s, E. J. Richards, who described himself as a hobbyist carrot breeder, wrote

to the geneticists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in search of assistance with his experiment of

knocking out the gene for red colour using x-ray radiation. He had access to a powerful industrial x-

ray machine that he envisioned would speed up his progress toward the elusive yellow carrot.49

Or take the case of W. E. Bott of suburban Lakewood, Ohio, who brought into his garden a

far more portable technique from the laboratory. An amateur at plant breeding though an

experienced chemist, Bott boasted in 1939 to the Cleveland Press of his successes in producing

corkscrew zinnias, a snowball bush with ‘blossoms as big as a dinner plate’, and other floral

novelties. The secret of these achievements, which he eagerly divulged to fellow readers of the Press,

was application of a naturally occurring compound known as colchicine. Scientists had recently

discovered that treatment with this chemical generated changes in the chromosomes of plants,

which Bott believed opened new avenues for research. ‘The experiments are so new that the full

capacities of colchicine are unknown’, Bott emphasized, and although he believed that conducting

experiments with the chemical might prove economically rewarding this was not the most exciting

16

aspect of the work. He rejoiced instead at ‘the field of experimentation it opens up to the most

humble of amateurs’, who could work and study alongside the expert to discover just what

colchicine could do.50 Bott was just one participant in a decade-long craze for chemical-based plant

breeding. The fad originated in biological research laboratories in the 1930s but quickly extended to

commercial breeding operations and also to domestic gardens where amateur breeders such as Bott

made their own assessments of colchicine’s value and potential uses.51

The chemical colchicine had long been used in medical therapy, especially as a treatment for

gout, but it was not until 1937 that it began to be used on plants as well as people. That year, a

handful of biologists discovered that the chemical could be used reliably to induce the duplication of

chromosomes in many plant species.52 This proved cause for excitement. As plant biologists then

understood, the multiplication of entire sets of chromosomes was an important aspect of plant

evolution.53 Many biologists saw in colchicine a tool that would aid basic research in cytology,

genetics, and evolution.54 Their excitement, however, paled in comparison to that of plant breeders.

Some of the most economically valuable cereal crops were known to be polyploids – they had

multiple sets of homologous chromosomes; agriculturists hoped that colchicine might be used to

multiply the chromosomes in important crops and thereby create new and still more valuable types.

Breeders also envisioned using colchicine to cross varieties previously resistant to hybridization

because they differed in chromosome number, and to generate fertile plants from normally sterile

hybrids. Most spectacular of all, they discussed the opportunity to produce enlarged varieties of

flowers, fruits, and vegetables, because doubling the number of chromosomes often resulted in

doubling the size of these plant features.55 The early research among biologists and breeders on

colchicine garnered a considerable amount of publicity, most of it either sensational or nearly so.

Newspapers and magazines celebrated the finding of colchicine's perceived evolution-enhancing

powers and the likelihood that its use would significantly enhance agricultural production.56

17

Colchicine had another attractive feature frequently mentioned in both scientific and popular

reports: it was available for purchase, if not from the local pharmacy as some articles claimed then

certainly from larger drug and chemical firms, and it was fairly affordable as only a small amount was

needed to produce an effective solution.57 As a result, even from the earliest publications, interested

amateurs felt able and encouraged to try their hands at manipulating chromosomes with colchicine.

A few scientists fostered this amateur interest through their own research. The geneticist

Albert Blakeslee of the Carnegie Institute of Washington’s Cold Spring Harbor laboratory, who

would be credited most frequently for the discovery of colchicine's effects, claimed in his first

publication on the subject in 1937 that ‘juggling chromosomes for the betterment of plant-kind is

primarily a matter for the trained genetics engineer who knows the chromosomes with which he is

working’. But he and his co-author Amos Avery went on to explain how one could obtain colchicine

and what it would cost, as well as how to identify a tetraploid by examining pollen under a

microscope, a task with which ‘any high school biology teacher’ could assist.58 Blakeslee succeeded in

inspiring imitators. He reported having received by 1940 over 1,100 letters from plant breeders of all

skill levels inquiring into techniques for applying colchicine.59 He continued to receive such inquires

(which he responded to with a form letter outlining the basic information about colchicine) for

years. In a letter that serves as a fairly typical example of this correspondence, a woman from

Denver, Colorado, wrote in 1945, ‘I am an amateur – a garden hobbyist but deeply interested in

improvements in plant life’. After this introduction she cut right to the chase, requesting information

on how ‘to use Colchicine in some experiments’.60 In addition to those self-described ‘hobbyists’

there were also individuals who sought specific improvements, and who likely had potential

economic rewards in mind. For example in one case, a South Florida man, frustrated with the slow

response of his local experiment station, wrote to learn how he might try colchicine to improve

mangoes.61

18

Another of the colchicine researchers went about encouraging amateur participation in

colchicine research via a more direct route. The cytologist O. J. Eigsti found himself short on the

experimental space needed to conduct his work at the University of Oklahoma in 1939. To address

the problem, he extended his laboratory into the farms and gardens of the surrounding community,

inviting what he called ‘laymen scientists’ to aid his research by growing colchicine-treated seeds and

plants and reporting their results to him. Inundated by responses, he developed his research into an

outreach effort national in scope with hundreds of participants.62 According to one Science Service

news report, ‘the cooperative efforts of interested garden-makers’ would help Eigsti determine if

colchicine could be truly useful.63 The follow-up report 18 months later seemed definitive. ‘Amateur

Plant Breeders Aid Science’ declared the headline, a point illustrated by an image of soybeans that

had been doubled in size through the efforts of Eunice Moore, a nurse from Tulsa, Oklahoma.64

Although the initial aim of the collaboration had been for Eigsti to learn from his amateur

correspondents about the range of plants on which colchicine treatment would be effective, Eigsti's

perspective soon evolved to one of seeing the opportunity as being more instructive for his

participants than necessarily valuable to his research program. In one follow-up publication he and

an assistant declared of their project, ‘[I]t is a valuable method of education…By participating in this

cooperative project, gardeners are learning the importance of the scientific method, and the

biological facts underlying the origin of new varieties of plants’.65 This assessment suggests the

extent to which Eigsti considered the project useful along lines similar to the perceived value of so-

called citizen science initiatives later in the 20th century: much as scientists might gain through the

collection of data by laypersons, the laypersons themselves were seen to gain by their education in

scientific practices.66 Of course, Eigsti's volunteers may well have considered their participation in a

very different light. They were, after all, told that they were conducting valuable, independent

experimental research. They even had to sign a form that asked whether, where plants were treated

19

with colchicine, amateurs were ‘willing to allow the University of Oklahoma to have control over

any future economic possibilities of these plants’.67 With such encouragement it is likely that many

indeed saw themselves more as experimental investigators than subjects of an educational initiative.

Amateur plant breeders did not need direct access to professional scientists to pursue their

interest in colchicine. For example, they could encounter ideas on how they might use the chemical

simply by turning the pages of a newspaper or their monthly gardening magazine.68 As with selection

and hybridization, many reporters emphasized that the work was quite suitable for the home garden,

requiring no experience and no complex equipment. The science journalist Frank Thone repeatedly

encouraged amateur participation in colchicine work in the pages of the Science News-letter and in

other Science Service reports.69 According to him, the basic requirements to start were few: ‘You

don't have to be a Ph.D. in botany to make valuable contributions in the field of plant breeding. All

you need is some seeds, a little colchicine—and plenty of interest in the subject, plus patience, and

willingness to keep your garden-patch weeded’.70 Another reporter echoed the simplicity of the

methods, suggesting to his readers that ‘[i]f you have ever done any gardening, you might have an

urge to try your own hand at changing chromosomes… In contrast to many scientific experiments,

this one is easy to perform’. He continued with specific instructions for both soaking seeds in

colchicine dilutions and applying colchicine directly to the flower buds of full-grown plants, things

his readers could do in their ‘own back-yards’.71 At least one commercial outfit offered for sale to

amateurs an experimental guide that would aid their colchicine breeding efforts.72 The aim suggested

by many of these articles and advertisements was the production of valuable new types, but as the

emphasis on experimentation and ‘changing chromosomes’ suggests, the sense of entering into the

unknown – in this case tinkering with some fundamental component of living things – was likely to

have been just as important. W. E. Bott in his explanation of chromosome manipulation described

to readers how knowledge of the mechanics of heredity would ‘intensify the incredulity you feel at

20

witnessing colchicine's power’, and one suspects it was just that power that made Bott so eager to

deploy the chemical in his garden.73

Most of those who applied colchicine in their gardens were likely to have satisfied their

personal curiosity in the attempt and stopped there, or else been disappointed in outcomes that were

undoubtedly less spectacular than reports had led them to believe. Others, such as Bott, felt an

imperative to share their results, generating through these community-wide knowledge. Another

like-minded amateur, Kenneth Houghton of Dedham, Massachusetts, wrote to the popular

American gardening magazine Horticulture in 1940 to describe the challenges he had faced in his

colchicine experimentation. He had in the year prior tested its effects on lupins, shasta daisies, and

gladioli. His work had not produced anything of value – nearly every one of his plants had died – yet

he thought ‘the difficulties encountered may be of interest’ to other readers and so offered them for

general circulation.74 Other experimenters provided reports on their colchicine research to flower

and garden societies, where an altered iris, lily, or African violet was sure to be of interest.75

Amateur experimentation with colchicine was perceived to be significant enough in extent

that alarmed scientists and professional breeders cautioned would-be experimenters that colchicine

was in fact a poisonous chemical and could cause bodily harm if inappropriately handled. The Journal

of Heredity had attempted to pre-empt uninformed experimentation in an editorial published after

Blakeslee and Avery's 1937 announcement.76 This warning was further fleshed out the following

year. ‘Colchicine is being so widely used’, the editor noted, ‘that a repeated word of warning

regarding its extremely poisonous nature may not be amiss’. The notice warned that even dilute

solutions of the chemical would be damaging to skin if not washed immediately, and included a

harrowing personal account from the editor, who had accidentally gotten colchicine dust in his eye.77

Haig Dermen of the USDA, who was at the time conducting extensive breeding work using

colchicine, attempted another warning about the hazards of working with the chemical in 1940,

21

likely sensing that public interest (and with it the number of amateur users) had only grown in the

interim.78 Some professionals, such as the flower breeder Gordon Morrison, thought that such

mixed warnings did not go far enough – the public ought to know that colchicine was not the

miracle worker that most articles claimed it to be.79 Other critics voiced similar concerns,

complaining about having heard fantastical claims of ‘family-sized vegetables’ and ‘Shasta daisies the

size of dinner plates’ being produced in backyards and even on fire escapes.80 These individuals

fumed about the public being fed what they perceived as misleading information that in turn led to

amateur experiments. Their ire suggests that they saw a boundary between the activities appropriate

for amateurs and those appropriate for professionals, and felt a need to demarcate these.

In the end, such critics need not have worried. The fortunes of colchicine rose quickly, but

they fell almost as fast. Professional scientists and breeders enthusiastically took up work with the

chemical soon after the 1937 announcement of its effects, using it across a wide variety of species

and, as described here, experimentation among amateurs followed suit.81 Within a few years,

however, the researchers who had initially discovered and promoted the use of colchicine in plant

improvement changed their tone. It became more evident that colchicine would not be a speedy

shortcut to improved varieties but simply one tool among many available to the breeder for

manipulating plant heredity.82 One exception was in floriculture, where professionals touted the

potential for straightforward and rapid improvement through colchicine for a longer period.83 The

idea of colchicine experiments as a cutting-edge tool also persisted longer among expert amateurs,

where its accessibility, ease of use, and immediate effects seemed to continually generate new

interest – and on occasion new plants.84 At the end of the 20th century it was technique still discussed

in amateur circles as a means to improve plants ranging in kind from magnolias to marijuana.85

The persistence of colchicine also reflected in part the continued importance of novelty in

both professional and amateur horticultural breeding, for colchicine remained useful chiefly as a

22

means to generate new and different traits. Ideally, these would be the more vigorous blooms or

bigger fruits or vegetables that breeders thought could be produced through the creation of

polyploidy types. However, in addition to potentially duplicating chromosomes, colchicine often

caused other gene and chromosome changes that in turn led to distinctive plants. These random

mutations, often called ‘breaks’ or ‘sports’ by breeders, were of limited use in agricultural breeding

such as of grains and cereals. By comparison, they were a key component of specialty flower and

fruit production, areas that were also more within the purview of the amateur.86 Horticultural

breeders sought unusual forms such as double flowers or previously undocumented colours, or

modifications in fruit that would make a variety entirely distinctive. Unlike agricultural improvement

with its focus on specific traits that produced better-adapted or more productive plants, horticulture

was a sphere in which there was a very good chance that unusual or different meant better. This in

turn offered amateurs and professionals alike a comparatively wide range for perceived successes

and placed a high premium on mutations.87

In the interest it sustained related to its mutagenic ability, and the association of mutation

with novelty, colchicine took its place among a whole suite of mutation-inducing tools inspired by

research in experimental biology and endorsed by amateurs at mid-century. These tools ranged from

x-rays to various toxic chemicals, from temperature extremes to radioisotopes. All were at different

times celebrated as producing change effectively, quickly, and easily – and as methods that allowed

ample scope for amateur achievement in particular. For example, when the amateur plant breeder

John James – a self-described ‘Frankenstein of flowers’ – instructed readers on how to become

‘creative gardeners’ in his 1961 Create New Flowers and Plants... Indoors and Out, he delineated four basic

categories in which the amateur might successfully accomplish this: discovery, selection,

hybridization, and mutation. Whereas the first three were tried-and-true techniques, methods of

inducing mutation were both thrillingly new and as-yet-unperfected. James described for his readers

23

the application of colchicine and radiation, both of which he envisioned as promising routes to

amateur achievement.88

James had been led into such work by his own tinkerer-like inclinations to see what kinds of

changes he could effect in plants, first undertaking a project in which he scraped the radium from

luminous watch dials and exposed budding roses this material. The process did not lead James to an

improved flower – in his estimation ‘it was the most deformed, blackspot-susceptible rose I have

ever known’ – but it did confirm for him that radiant energy could provide be the basis for many

future investigations in plant breeding.89

James was eager to initiate others into such activities with descriptions of how other

amateurs might undertake their own such projects. Rather than recommend the radium experiment

to his readers, he advocated some faster and safer methods of obtaining radioactive materials

available by 1961. For example, he described how one could request small amounts of radioisotopes

from the Atomic Energy Commission or from a local pharmacist. Lest this process intimidate

potential experimenters, he made it clear that obtaining radioisotopes would be the most challenging

part of the procedure. This otherwise required only rubber gloves, an eyedropper, forceps (ice tongs

or a clothespin substitutable), cotton, and some adhesive tape, and consisted mostly in placing a few

drops of radioisotopes in solution on the cotton and attaching this to developing buds for varying

amounts of time. Once removed from the plant, the radioactive cotton could be easily disposed of

by burying it in a far corner of the garden.90

Another amateur whose experiences with mutation breeding spurred him to describe the

methods for other enthusiasts was James P. Haworth, who invited readers of his book Plant Magic to

join him on an exploration of ‘MUTATIA – the realm of the Mutants’.91 Though he focused on

colchicine as an ideal experiment for the beginner, Haworth did not see any reason for amateurs to

limit themselves to this well-established technique. His survey of scientific literature led him to

24

include everything from changes in temperature, to x-rays and ultraviolet, to an array of chemicals,

to mechanical forces such as centrifuging. Because x-rays and radium were a little dangerous, he

advocated sticking to ultraviolet rays from a commercial sunlamp for radiation experimentation; his

‘mechanically minded’ readers could ‘rig up home made centrifuges to attain any desired speed’

though this was, he admitted, also not without potential hazard.92 Again, the appeal was assumed to

be in the sense of personal accomplishment gained through even the most simple of the

experimental methods Haworth suggested. As he pointed out to those readers he inspired to

experiment, ‘as you hurry home from office, factory, or school’, you would be watching seeds ‘which

you and you alone have brought into being’ sprout and grow in your own home garden.93 Although

professional breeders had new techniques that had to be performed in a laboratory, such as embryo

culture with its requisite expensive microscopes and precision methods, the ordinary gardener in his

or her usual place could succeed with most methods. ‘[W]orking in our gardens’, Haworth summed

up, ‘All of us, Mrs. Jones down the street, Uncle John back in New York State, and you, and I’,

could explore the experimental world of amateur plant breeding.94

As had other amateur breeding evangelists in preceding decades, both James and Haworth

were keen to convince their readers that this was a field in which anyone could make a contribution,

whether in the innovation of a new plant or in the development of a useful technology. ‘The field is

wide open to all. Imagine the cumulative effect of thousands of hobbyists working on plant

improvement. New ideas, new techniques, and new reagents will bring us a new horticulture’,

Haworth declared.95 The amateur could devise a new method for the application of colchicine more

effective than any used to date, or discover another chemical mutagen still more potent. He or she

might innovate a new centrifuge just as easily as a new garden pea. James echoed this sentiment. He

emphasized the significant role of luck in which mutation turned up and at what moment and the

impossibility of predicting the exact product of cross-pollination – conditions that levelled the

25

playing field between professional and amateur breeder considerably. Amateurs, in fact, might be

more successful in innovating, because their judgment would not be clouded by prejudicial

preconceived notions of what might or might not be possible.96

The ideas about induced-mutation plant breeding advanced by these two adventuring

amateurs were not as uncommon or inaccessible as one might think. First, they appeared at a

moment when mutation and especially radiation-induced mutation were concepts that carried

heightened significance in American culture. In the post-war years, concerns about nuclear testing

and potential nuclear war directed public attention towards the genetic hazards of radiation and

fallout. While scientists debated the genetic consequences of the nuclear age within such forums as

the National Academy of Sciences, popular productions such as the film Them!, which depicted giant

mutant ants resulting from atomic testing, transformed radiation-induced mutation into a pop

culture concept.97

Second, the methods themselves were fairly accessible. Colchicine no doubt circulated most

widely, since it could easily be purchased, but even irradiation would not have been difficult to

pursue. In the 1960s, there were a number of routes for home gardeners hoping to try this method.

As had x-ray experimenters since the 1920s, they could take seeds to their local physician for

irradiation; Scientific American recommended this as a substitute for the gamma radiation applied in

atomic laboratories.98 Here, too, the specific social and political configurations of the atomic age

contributed to an expansion of the opportunities available to would-be mutation experimenters.

With a significant amount of attention directed to peaceful applications of atomic energy, and the

interest of the Atomic Energy Commission in ensuring the success of such applications, professional

geneticists and plant breeders had ample state support to pursue studies of radiation-induced

mutation and its use in agricultural activities, including plant breeding.99 Thus if amateurs were truly

determined, they might reach out to the geneticists at Brookhaven National Laboratory, or to the

26

cooperative irradiation program of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Both of these had

established seed- and plant-irradiation outreach initiatives in 1950s and 60s as part of government

and scientific emphasis on peaceful uses of atomic energy.100 Most convenient of all, the interested

amateur could purchase Dr. Clarence Speas’ irradiated flower seeds at their local Walgreen’s, or

similar stock from Breck’s Seed of Boston and other outlets. These were seeds that had been

exposed to ionizing radiation of various types at the nation’s atomic research sites. ‘Be the first to

grow unpredictable “atomic” plants’, Dr. Speas’ advertisements proclaimed, ‘Join the worldwide

search for new species by safe experiments in atomic science!’101 Even if they weren’t handling

radioactive materials themselves, therefore, amateur gardeners could still participate in the

experimental culture of atomic-era plant breeding – not to mention of course the larger culture of

atomic celebration and promotion sanctioned by the U.S. government through the Atomic Energy

Commission and later amplified still further by the International Atomic Energy Agency.102

Whether intrigued more by the idea of manipulating living organisms or by the novelty of

atomic energy, many garden columnists enthused about these possibilities, much as they had about

potentially revolutionary horticultural techniques in decades past.103 Those who did have a chance to

try gardening with irradiated stock showed off their creations at flower shows and fairs.104 Others

participated in the Atomic Garden Society, an organization established in the early 1960s in the

United Kingdom and dedicated to the sharing of results and seeds from radiation experiments.105

Together these amateur breeders maintained a view of the garden as a domestic space of

investigation and innovation, one that would not be intimidated even by so exclusive a technology as

atomic fission or be limited to those activities that professional breeders had decades ago deemed

safe, reliable, and productive.

As these examples from x-rays to colchicine to radioisotopes show, many techniques and

technologies for altering the genes and chromosomes of plants circulated outside of the

27

experimental biology laboratory, where they were put to use and celebrated by amateur plant

breeders, often in their domestic gardens. They were accepted, with some scattered but infrequent

objections, as useful and beneficial to amateur practice.106 That many amateurs described their work

in terms of experiment and used scientific language suggests that they saw themselves as in

conversation with scientists and with professional breeders, even as they engaged in breeding

primarily as a leisure time pursuit. Thus many aspects of the enthusiasm for the use of chemicals and

radiation in breeding were reminiscent of that which had surrounded the work of Burbank at the

turn of the century. These included an emphasis on the application of new scientific knowledge and

advanced techniques in the production of improved plant varieties, the argument that this was a

world of experiment and opportunity open to breeders of many backgrounds and skill levels, and

especially the claim that great pleasure and satisfaction that would be derived by the amateur from

understanding and applying these techniques as part of their leisure time.

These aspects also link amateur plant breeding of 20th century to other amateur

experimentalist or tinkerer traditions. Like those better described groups, amateur breeders engaged

in the exploration of particular technologies and recent scientific developments in the hopes of

directing these to their own, mostly leisure oriented, ends. This was often a communal activity, in

that amateurs shared their methods and results in a variety of forums, whether clubs, newspapers,

specialist magazines, or even books. They were served, and encouraged, by similar popular science

and technology publications.

As I suggested in the introduction, the parallels that can be found among various twentieth

century amateur communities points to the possibility that something might be gained by

considering them collectively, and not as distinct groups centred around a specific technology or

scientific enterprise.107 In doing so we might identify, for example, the particular rewards that first

attract lay participation and the conditions necessary for amateur communities to emerge and

28

flourish. We might notice overlaps among participants or the venues through which they learn skills

and communicate findings, and recognize the common ways in which amateur participants describe

their relationships to professional science (e.g., as subversive or supportive). In doing so we might

not only achieve a better understanding of what motivates amateur activities and the relationship of

these to professional science, but also contribute to a ‘generalist’ history of science and technology

much as Rob Kohler and others have called for, one that identifies the practices and conditions

common to knowledge production more generally – albeit in this case knowledge production

outside the typical boundaries of professional research.108

D-I-Y GMOs

My research into the history of amateur plant breeding qua amateur experimentation highlights at

least one condition that appears to be particularly important for the development of this interest,

and which is likely to also (and perhaps obviously) be a key factor across amateur science and

technology. In all of the cases described in this paper, methodological simplicity and access to tools

or technologies were key to amateur participation. Pausing to assess the importance of this facet of

amateur practice returns us to the recent activities in do-it-yourself biology with which I opened this

essay, and to a new view of amateur practice in the history of the life sciences.

In all of the cases I described above, the methods and tools required for plant breeding were

presented as uncomplicated and affordable, and the instructions straightforward. Yet differences in

accessibility in practice, whether intellectual or material, did seem to influence the extent of

subsequent celebration: it may explain for example the dominance of Burbank over Mendel in

amateur literature, and why colchicine achieved more visibility than did other mutation methods. By

comparison, the later 20th century saw a dramatic shift in the accessibility of the tools and techniques

emerging from the genetics laboratory. The transgenic techniques developed for use in plant

29

breeding in the 1980s, a set of technologies usually known as genetic modification or genetic

engineering, unlike almost every previous method of generating a new plant variety were not

immediately accessible to the amateur breeder. These required sophisticated laboratory equipment,

specific training and certification, time and capital investment. Genetic engineering was a task for

professionals, whether the employees of academic institutions, government laboratories, or

multinational agribusinesses.109 This was true not only in plant breeding, but across the board: the

use of molecular genetic technologies was the purview of a limited number of people working in

very particular kinds of professional spaces.

This perception of being closed off to a general audience is of course why DIYbio and

related efforts to increase access to molecular genetic technologies have received so much breathless

attention in the popular press. A suite of technologies once very limited and subject to regulation of

various kinds, not to mention first introduced in a context of fear and public concern over its

potential hazards, appears to be opening up to wider use.110 Although it remains to be seen whether

DIYbio will produce an amateur community whose members can effectively wield the technologies

of molecular genetic engineering and direct these toward the creation of novel organisms on a

significant scale, its activities have called attention to a shift in how and by whom molecular genetic

technologies can be used. The perception of just how dramatic this shift can be imagined to be was

captured in a fanciful characterization of ‘our biotech future’ made in 2007 by the physicist Freeman

Dyson. In a short piece in The New York Review of Books, Dyson predicted an inevitable

‘domestication of biotechnology’ in which its tools were made widely accessible and their application

on a wide scale by individuals in turn would form the basis of a sharp improvement in global human

well being. I want to ignore for a moment the improbability of the future Dyson imagined to focus

only on his illustration of what he meant by ‘domesticated biotechnology’. Pointing first to the fact

that already today there are ‘thousands of people, amateurs and professionals’ who ‘devote their

30

lives’ to breeding organisms ranging from orchids to snakes, Dyson envisioned that some of the

most enthusiastic adherents to a new user-friendly biotechnology would be the breeders. ‘There will

be do-it-yourself kits for gardeners who will use genetic engineering to breed new varieties of roses

and orchids’, he enthused, and he predicted equivalent tools for breeders of pets, all resulting in an

explosion of new varieties of plants and animals.111

I consider Dyson's ideas to be more useful in assessing the past than the future – for his

casting of breeders as potentially the earliest enthusiasts of his ‘domesticated biotechnology’ calls to

mind historians' casting of breeders as some of the earliest biotechnologists, full stop.112 To these

two characterizations, first of the continuity in the enthusiasm of certain amateur communities for

manipulating living organisms to produce novel forms, and second of the continuity in efforts to

harness living organisms to human needs through genetic manipulation and biological

experimentation, I add a third. This is the continuity of amateur engagement with the experimental

practices meant to harness living organisms to human needs, even as they became more

interventionist and more experimental over time. The dividing line that most historians have

assumed existed between experimentalist and amateur within the history of the life sciences has been

misleading in this regard. Amateur experimental biology, as characterized by a lay community using

the methods and tools of laboratory research to pursue interests and inquires of their own design, is

not entirely new to twenty-first century biology. If it seems new to the home, as recent observers

have suggested, it is only because it has moved a few dozen feet, from the garden and into the

garage.

1 Bobe and Cowell were not the first to recognize the possibilities of amateur molecular biology. For one early and

often-referenced article on the subject, see Rob Carlson, ‘Splice It Yourself’, Wired, May 2005, online at

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.05/view.html?pg=2, accessed 29 May 2012.

31

2 Early news reports on DIYbio in the mainstream press include Carolyn Johnson, ‘Accessible Science. Hackers aim

to Make Biology Household Practice’, Boston Globe, 15 September 2008; Julian Guthrie, ‘Do-It-Yourself Biology

Grows with Technology’, San Francisco Chronicle, 20 December 2009, A1, online at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-

bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/20/MNFT1B1899.DTL&ao=all, accessed 11 May 2012; ‘Taking Biological

Research out of the Laboratory’, National Public Radio interview, 27 December 2009, transcript online at

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121954328, accessed 11 May 2012). Accounts in science

journals include: Howard Wolinsky, ‘Kitchen Biology’, EMBO Reports (2009) 10, pp. 683-685; ‘Straight Talk with…

Mac Cowell and Jason Bobe’, Nature Medicine (2009), pp. 230-231; Joe Alper, ‘Biotech in the Basement’, Nature

Biotechnology (2009) 27, pp. 1077-78. For more recent reports, see: Sam Kean, ‘A Lab of Their Own’, Science 333

(2011), pp. 1240-124; Antonio Regalado, ‘Doing Biotech in My Bedroom’, Technology Review, 13 February 2012,

online at http://www.technologyreview.com/business/39597, accessed 29 May 2012. More extended journalist

accounts include Marcus Wohlsen, Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life, New York: Penguin, 2011; and

selected chapters in Jack Hitt, A Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character, New York: Crown, 2012.

3 In his report on the first DIYbio meetup in Boston in March 2008, Bobe asked ‘Can DIYbio.org be the Homebrew

Computing Club of biology?’ (online at http://diybio.org/2008/05). Other examples of this comparison include:

Alan Riddell, ‘Tweaking Genes in the Basement’, Wired, 7 July 2006, online at

http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2006/07/71276; Alessandro Delfani, ‘Tweaking Genes in Your

Garage: Biohacking between Activism and Entrepreneurship’, in Wolfgang Sutzl and Theo Hug (eds.), Activist Media

and Biopolitics: Critical Media Interventions in the Age of Biopower, Universität Innsbruck, 2012, pp. 163-78.

4 e.g., ‘Hacking Goes Squishy’, Economist, 3 September 2009, 30-1; ‘Straight Talk with…’ op. cit. (2), p. 231; Wolinsky,

op. cit. (2), p. 684.

5 Guthrie, op. cit. (2), A1.

6 ‘Taking Biological Research Out of the Laboratory’, op. cit. (2).

7 For an analysis of these various comparisons and their helpfulness in understanding amateur biological experiments,

see Christopher M. Kelty, ‘Outlaw, Hackers, Victorian Amateurs: Diagnosing Public Participation in the Life

Sciences Today’, Journal of Science Communication (2010) 9, pp. 1-8.

32

8 On amateur radio and television operators, see Kristen Haring, Ham Radio’s Technical Culture, Cambridge: MIT Press,

2006; Kristen Haring, ‘The ‘Freer Men’ of Ham Radio: How a Technical Hobby Provided Social and Spatial

Distance’, Technology and Culture (2003) 44, pp. 734-761; Yuzo Takahashi, ‘A Network of Tinkerers: The Advent of

the Radio and Television Receiver Industry in Japan’, Technology and Culture (2000) 41, pp. 460-484; Susan J. Douglas,

‘Audio Outlaws: Radio and Phonograph Enthusiasts’, in John L. Wright (ed.), Possible Dreams: Enthusiasm for

Technology in America, Dearborn: Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, 1992, pp. 45-59; Susan J. Douglas,

Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. On computer tinkering,

see Honghong Tinn, ‘From DIY Computers to Illegal Copies: The Controversy over Tinkering with

Microcomputers in Taiwan, 1980-1984’, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (2011) 33, pp. 75-88; see also Martin

Kelly-Campbell and William Aspray, Computer: A History of the Information Machine, Boulder: Westview Press, 2004, ch.

10. For an account of early amateur rocketry in the United States, see Anthony M. Springer, ‘Early Experimental

Programs of the American Rocketry Society, 1931-1940’, Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets (2003) 40, pp. 475-90; an

account of amateur rocketry in Germany can be found in Michael J. Neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and

the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995, esp. ch. 1. On tinkering in electronic music,

see Steve Waksman, ‘California Noise: Tinkering with Hardcore and Heavy Metal in Southern California’, Social

Studies of Science (2004) 34, pp. 675-702. For a breezy account of do-it-yourself nuclear science, see Ken Silverstein,

‘The Radioactive Boy Scout: When a Teenager Attempts to Build a Breeder Reactor’, Harper’s, December 1998, pp.

59-72.

9 On amateur bird watching, see Mark V. Barrow, A Passion for Birds: American Ornithology after Audubon, Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 2000. On specimen collecting, see Robert Kohler, All Creatures: Naturalists, Collectors, and

Biodiversity, 1850-1950, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Other similar (but not biology-related) 20th

century examples of public participation in scientific observation include most famously astronomy, and also

weather and earthquake monitoring. On amateur astronomy, see Patrick McCray, Keep Watching the Skies! The Story of

Operation Moonwatch and the Dawn of the Space Age, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008; Patrick McCray,

‘Amateur Scientists, the International Geophysical Year, and the Ambitions of Fred Whipple’, Isis (2006) 97, pp.

634-58. On earthquakes, see Fa-Ti Fan, ‘“Collective Monitoring, Collective Defense”: Science, Earthquakes, and

Politics in Communist China’, Science in Context (2012) 25, pp. 127-54. On weather, see Jeremy Vetter, ‘Lay

33

Observers, Telegraph Lines, and Kansas Weather: The Field Network as a Mode of Knowledge Production’, Science

in Context (2011) 24, pp. 259-80.

10 On the negotiation of this relationship in the 20th century, see, e.g., Barrow, op. cit. (9); Kohler, op. cit. (9); Susan

Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer, ‘Institutional Ecology, “Translations” and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and

Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39’, Social Studies of Science (1989) 19, pp. 387-420;

On the distinctions between amateur and professional practice in the 19th century, see, e.g., Samuel J. M. Alberti,

‘Amateurs and Professionals in One County: Biology and Natural History in Late Victorian Yorkshire’, Journal of the

History of Biology (2001) 34, pp. 115-47; Adrian Desmond, ‘Redefining the X Axis: “Professional,” “Amateurs” and

the Making of Mid-Victorian Biology – A Progress Report’, Journal of the History of Biology (2001) 34, pp. 3-50;

Elizabeth M. Keeney, The Botanizers: Amateur Scientists in Nineteenth-Century America, Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1992;

Anne Secord, ‘Corresponding Interests: Artisans and Gentlemen in Nineteenth-Century Natural History’, British

Journal for the History of Science (1994) 27, pp. 383-408.

11 See, e.g., Bruno Strasser, ‘The Experimenter’s Museum: GenBank, Natural History, and the Moral Economies of

Biomedicine’, Isis (2011) 102, pp. 60-96.

12 Rachel P. Maines, Hedonizing Technologies: Paths to Pleasure in Hobbies and Leisure, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

Press, 2009. The history of lay participation is most recently addressed in a special issue of Science in Context on ‘Lay

Participation in the History of Scientific Observation’: Science in Context (2011) 24. Within the literature of leisure

studies amateur science appears as a variety of what Robert Stebbins ‘serious leisure’, sharing important

commonalities with other leisure activities pursued in a systematic fashion; although Stebbins sees commonalities

among varieties of amateur scientific practices, he does not place these in the context of the history of science and

technology. See, e.g., Robert A. Stebbins, ‘Science Amateurs? Rewards and Costs in Amateur Astronomy and

Archeology’, Journal of Leisure Research (1981) 13, pp. 289-304; Robert A. Stebbins, Amateurs, Professionals, and Serious

Leisure, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992.

13 D. J. Beyer, ‘Crossing Tomatoes with Eggplants and Peppers’, Country Life in America, September 1910, p. 549.

14 Beyer, op. cit. (13)

15 On the expanding interest in horticulture, see Philip Pauly, Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America,

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. On the history of gardening in the 19th and 20th centuries, see (in

34

addition to Pauly, Fruits and Plains, and the sources in cit. 16 and 17): Patricia Tice, Gardening in America, 1830-1910,

Rochester, New York: The Margaret Woodbury Stron Museum, 1984; Ann Leighton, American Gardens of the

Nineteenth Century: “For Comfort and Affluence”, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987; Walter T. Punch

(ed.) with William Howard Adams, Massachusetts Horticultural Society, Keeping Eden: A History of Gardening in

America, Boston: Little, Brown, 1992. A further resource is U. P. Hedrick, A History of Horticulture in America to

1860, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950.

16 On horticultural societies see Tamara Plakins Thornton, ‘Horticulture and American Character’ and Walter T.

Punch, ‘The Garden Organized: The Public Face of Horticulture’, in W. Punch et al., op. cit. (15). See also Tamara

Plakins Thornton, Cultivating Gentlemen: The Meaning of Country Life among the Boston Elite, 1785-1860, New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1989.

17 Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, For Shade and for Comfort: Democratizing Horticulture in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest, West

Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2004.

18 On the increasing commercialization of horticulture, see Cheryl Lyon-Jenness, ‘Planting a Seed: The Nineteenth-

Century Horticultural Boom in America’, Business History Review (2004) 78, pp. 381-421; Susan Warren Lanman,

‘"For Profit and Pleasure": Peter Henderson and the Commercialization of Horticulture in Nineteenth Century

America’, in Industrializing Organisms: Introducing Evolutionary History, Philip Scranton and Susan R. Schrepfer (eds.),

New York: Routledge, 2004, pp. 19-42. On the growth of suburbs, see Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The

Suburbanization of the United States, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985; John R. Stilgoe, Borderland: Origins of the

American Suburb, 1820-1939, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988; Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia: Green Fields

and Urban Growth, 1820-2000, New York: Pantheon Books, 2003.

19 On cereal crop and other agricultural breeding, see Jack Ralph Kloppenburg, First the Seed: The Political Economy of

Plant Biotechnology, 1492-2000, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, ch. 3. On fruit breeding, see Daniel

Kevles, ‘Fruit Nationalism – Horticulture in the United States from the Revolution to the First Centennial’, in

Marco Beretta et al. (eds.), Aurora Torealis: Studies in the History of Science and Ideas in Honor of Tore Frängsmyr, Sagamore

Beach: Science History Publications, 2008, pp. 131-48. On gentleman cultivators, see Thornton, op. cit. (16).

20 Kloppenburg, op. cit. (19), pp. 58-90. See also Diane B. Paul and Barbara A. Kimmelman, ‘Mendel in America:

Theory and Practice, 1900-1919’, in Ronald Rainger et al. (eds.), The American Development of Biology, Philadelphia:

35

University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988, pp. 281-310. On interest in plant breeding within academic circles, see

Barbara A. Kimmelman, ‘The American Breeders' Association: Genetics and Eugenics in an Agricultural Context’,

Social Studies of Science (1983) 13, pp. 163-204; Deborah Kay Fitzgerald, The Business of Breeding: Hybrid Corn in Illinois,

1890-1940, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990.

21 Much has been written on the reception of Mendelism among scientists and breeders. See, in addition to the texts

in cit. 20 above, Barbara A. Kimmelman, ‘A Progressive Era Discipline: Genetics at American Agricultural Colleges

and Experiment Stations, 1900-1920’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1987, ProQuest/UMI 303610687;

Paolo Palladino, ‘Wizards and Devotees: On the Mendelian Theory of Inheritance and the Professionalization of

Agricultural Science in Great Britain and the United States, 1880-1930’, History of Science (1994) 32, pp. 409-44;

Kathy J. Cooke, ‘From Science to Practice, or Practice to Science? Chickens and Eggs in Raymond Pearl's

Agricultural Breeding Research, 1907-1916’, Isis (1997) 88, pp. 62-86; Garland E. Allen, ‘The Reception of

Mendelism in the United States, 1900-1930’, Comptes Rendus de l’Académie des Sciences - Series III - Sciences de la Vie

(2000) 323, pp. 1081-88.

22 Katherine Pandora makes the case that Burbank's status as a self-made man was a key component of his public

appeal. See Katherine Pandora, ‘Knowledge Held in Common: Tales of Luther Burbank and Science in the

American Vernacular’, Isis 92, no. 3 (2001): 497-502.

23 Even though scientists became critical of Burbank in the early 20th century, he continued to be a popular public

figure, often grouped in his time with the famous inventors Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. A recent account of

Burbank is Jane S. Smith, The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants, New York: Penguin

Press, 2009. Other accounts include Peter Dreyer, A Gardener Touched with Genius: The Life of Luther Burbank,

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985; Pandora, op. cit. (22).

24 William Sumner Harwood, ‘Every Man His Own Burbank’, Country Calendar, May 1905, pp. 21-3.

25 Henry Smith Williams, ‘Every Woman Her Own Burbank’, Good Housekeeping, April 1914, pp. 440-9.

26 For a selection of other similar instructional pieces, see: M. J. Iorns, ‘How to Make New Varieties’, Garden Magazine,

November 1905, pp. 170-1; Leonard Barron, ‘How to Do What Burbank Does’, Waterloo Daily Courier, August 1907,

pp. 6; Henry Williams, ‘Burbank’s Ways With Flowers’, Good Housekeeping, August 1914, pp. 158-67; William Haynes,

‘Game for Gardens’, Good Housekeeping, May 1916, pp. 560-6.

36

27 Harwood, op. cit. (24), p. 23.

28 This was also true of amateur guides not directly inspired by Burbank. See, for examples, S. W. Fletcher, ‘How New

Fruits Can Be Made by Crossing’, Garden Magazine, April 1908, pp. 142-6; Howard Ellsworth Gilkey, ‘Lilies Made to

Order’, Garden Magazine, April 1920, pp. 107-8; R. Mornington, ‘Creation of Hybrid Plants’, House & Garden, May

1922, p. 64; H. B. Tukey, ‘How You May Breed a New Fruit’, Garden & Home Builder, August 1926, p. 541.

29 ‘11 Types of Garden Enjoyment’, Garden Magazine, February 1907, pp. 23-4, image on p. 24.

30 Window ledge: Williams, op. cit. (26), p. 159. ‘Cooped-up city back yard’: William Sumner Harwood, New Creations in

Plant Life; an Authoritative Account of the Life and Work of Luther Burbank, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905,

p. 240.

31 These were the tools listed by Harwood; recommendations differed slightly from one guide to the next. See

Harwood, op. cit. (24), p. 22.

32 J. L. Normand, ‘Letter’, American Gardening, 5 December 1903, p. 669.

33 Haynes, op. cit. (26), p. 560.

34 Iorns, op. cit. (26), p. 171.

35 Beyer, op. cit. (13), p. 549.

36 Williams, op. cit. (25), p. 449.

37 E. P. Powell, ‘Fine Arts of the Country Home’, Outing, January 1911, p. 497.

38 On the longer history of hybridization, see Noël Kingsbury, Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding, Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 2009, ch. 4.

39 Historians attribute the popularity of Mendelian genetics in the United States to a number of factors, including the

professional interests of geneticists at agricultural research stations, the previous history of selection and

hybridization work at such stations, and the appeal to biologists of a set of scientific ideas that would enable them

to be as applied and interventionist as physicists and chemists. See Paul and Kimmelman, op. cit. (20); Fitzgerald,

op. cit. (20); Cooke, op. cit. (21); Allen, op. cit. (21).

40 J. R. Smith, ‘Making Plants and Fruits to Order’, Everybody's Magazine, September 1911, pp. 373-4.

37

41 W. P. Cockerell, ‘Making of the Red Sunflower’, Garden Magazine, July 1914, pp. 332-4, quotation on p. 332.

42 Cockerell, op. cit. (41), p. 333.

43 Several American horticultural societies had organized in the early and mid 1800s to promote fruit and flower

culture; membership in these included both gentlemen cultivators and commercial growers (see Pauly, op. cit. (15),

pp. 51-67). A less commercial and more middle-class culture characterized the individual floral societies that

organized about 100 years later. These were primarily dedicated to breeding and growing prize flowers of a specific

type, whether dahlia, lily, iris, or other. A third type of organization, the garden club, also appeared in the United

States in the early 20th century; garden clubs were initially by and for women cultivators, with a focus on civic

improvement (see Walter T. Punch, op. cit. (16), pp. 219-39).

44 Most societies had journals or yearbooks that documented the activities of their members, awards given at

exhibitions, advances in breeding or cultivation practices, and the like. See for example, New England Gladiolus Society

Yearbook, Bulletin of the American Iris Society, The Lily Yearbook and others. These were undoubtedly the most active and

knowledgeable communities of amateur plant breeders.

45 ‘Garden Clubs Are Means of Better Plants’, Sandusky Register, 15 May 1938, p. 15.

46 A. H. Carhart, ‘You Can Be a Plant Wizard’, Popular Science Monthly, July 1937, pp. 56-7, 112, quotation on p. 112.

47 On the history of the demonstration of radiation-induced mutation, see Luis Campos, ‘Radium and the Secret of

Life’, Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 2006, ProQuest/UMI 305345240. For the history of induced-mutation plant

breeding see Helen Anne Curry, ‘Accelerating Evolution, Engineering Life: American Agriculture and Technologies

of Genetic Modification, 1925-1960’, Ph.D. thesis, Yale University, 2012, ProQuest/UMI 3525240.

48 ‘Musician Speeds up Tree Growth in X-Ray Experiments’, Los Angeles Times, 23 February 1937, p. 16.

49 E. J. Richards to the Office of Geneticest [sic] at Cold Spring Harbor, 26 April 1947, Carnegie Institution of

Washington files, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory archives, Folder: Requests for Misc Information, 1943-1953.

50 W. E. Bott, ‘Test-Tube Garden’, Cleveland Press, 22 June 1939. See also the follow-up articles in the Press on 23 and 24

June 1939.

51 On the history of enthusiasm for colchicine in relation to plant breeding see Helen Anne Curry, ‘Making Marigolds:

38

Colchicine, Mutation Breeding, and Ornamental Horticulture’, in Luis Campos and Alexander von Schwerin (eds.),

Making Mutations: Objects, Practices, Contexts, Preprints of the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science, no.

393, 2010, pp. 259-84. For a contemporary view on the colchicine ‘fad’, see S. J. Wellensiek, ‘The Newest Fad,

Colchicine, and Its Origins’, Chronica Botanica (1939) 5, pp. 15-17. For an extended discussion of colchicine research,

see: O. J. Eigsti and Pierre Dustin, Colchicine in Agriculture, Medicine, Biology and Chemistry, Ames: [Iowa] State College

Press, 1955.

52 On the history of this research, see Curry, op. cit. (47), ch. 4; Jordan Goodman, ‘Plants, Cells, and Bodies: The

Molecular Biography of Colchicine, 1930-1975’, in Soraya de Chadarevian and Harmke Kamminga (eds.),

Molecularizing Biology and Medicine: New Practices and Alliances, 1910s-1970s, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1998, pp.

17-46. See also early research on colchicine and polyploidy: A. F. Blakeslee and A. G. Avery, ‘Methods of Inducing

Doubling of Chromosomes in Plants - by Treatment with Colchicine’, Journal of Heredity (1937) 28, pp. 393-411; O.

J. Eigsti, ‘ A Cytological Study of Colchicine Effects in the Induction of Polyploidy in Plants’, Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (1938) 24, pp. 56-63; B. R. Nebel and M. L. Ruttle, ‘The

Cytological and Genetical Significance of Colchicine’, Journal of Heredity (1938) 29, pp. 3-9.

53 On role of polyploidy in evolution as theorized around this time, see A Müntzing, ‘The Evolutionary Significance

of Autopolyploidy’, Hereditas (1936) 21, pp. 263-378. On the study of chromosomes in relation to plant genetics

and evolution in the work of one American scientist, see Luis Campos, ‘Genetics without Genes: Blakeslee, Datura,

and “Chromosomal Mutations”’, in A Cultural History of Heredity IV: Heredity in the Century of the Gene, Preprints of

the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science, no. 343, 2008, pp. 243-258.

54 This is addressed in Blakeslee and Avery, op. cit. (52), pp. 408-9.

55 All of these uses are described in: Blakeslee and Avery, op. cit. (52), pp. 410. For more detailed treatment of each

topic and related research, see: Eigsti and Dustin, op. cit. (51).

56 e.g., ‘New Control over Animal and Plant Life Reported’, Los Angeles Times, 26 October 1937, p. 1; Harry M. Davis,

‘New Elixir Found for Plant World’, New York Times, 26 October 1937, p. 17; Crowell Baynes, ‘Big Things Expected

from New Chemical’, Washington Post, 7 August 1938, p. R6; ‘Chemical Speeds Plant Evolution’, New York Times, 13

August 1939, p. 22.

57 e.g., Blakeslee and Avery, op. cit. (52); Davis, op. cit. (56).

39

58 Blakeslee and Avery, op. cit. (52), pp. 404-5.

59 ‘Reported From the Field of Science’, New York Times, 6 October, 1940, p. 59. Other researchers similarly received

an influx of colchicine-related requests, from individuals eager to participate in the research. Ernie Sears for

example, a geneticist and plant breeder at the University of Missouri, heard from many amateurs after publishing an

article on colchicine technique in 1939. See letters to Sears in his personal papers, Sears Papers, Western Historical

Manuscript Collection (Colombia, Mo.), folder 116 and elsewhere.

60 Viola MacDougall to Albert Blakeslee and Amos Avery, 1 December 1945, Papers of Albert F. Blakeslee, American

Philosophical Society (APS-AFB), Folder: Colchicine – Correspondence 2.

61 On mangoes: Robe B. Carson to Blakeslee, 20 April 1946, APS-AFB, Folder: Colchicine – Correspondence 2.

Examples of farmers seeking advice from Blakeslee include: George R. Ratliff to ‘Gentlemen’, 5 December 1945,

APS-AFB, Folder: Colchicine – Correspondence 2; Donald Abrham, n.d., APS-AFB, Folder: Colchicine –

Correspondence 2. Similar examples can be found in the correspondence files of other scientists working with

colchicine, such as Sears (see op. cit. (59)).

62 O. J. Eigsti and Barbara Tenney, A Report on Experiments with Colchicine by Laymen Scientists During 1941, Norman:

University of Oklahoma Press, 1942.

63 As seen, e.g., in ‘Oklahoma Botanist Offers Chemical for Experiments’, Bradford Era, 26 June 1940, p. 10.

64 Frank Thone, ‘Amateur Plant Breeders Aid Science’, Bradford Era, 17 December 1941, p. 10.

65 Barbara Tenney, ‘A Report on Experiments with Colchicine by Lay Scientists’, Proceedings of the Oklahoma Academy of

Science for 1941, pp. 38-10, quotation on p. 38.

66 A brief discussion of citizen science can be found in Jeremy Vetter, ‘Introduction: Lay Participation in the History

of Scientific Observation’, Science in Context (2011) 24, pp. 127-41; for historical perspectives on the role of lay

participation in science, see other contributions to Science in Context (2011) 24, no. 2. For a perspective on recent

citizen science projects, see: R. Bonney et al., ‘Citizen Science: A Developing Tool for Expanding Science

Knowledge and Scientific Literacy’, Bioscience (2009) 59, pp. 977-84.

67 Eigsti and Tenney, op. cit. (62), pp. 16.

68 A few examples: Glenn Couch, ‘A Botanist Upsets Heredity’, Sooner, January 1939, pp. 11, 27; ‘Miracle Drugs?’

40

Sunset, September 1940, pp. 36-37, 39; ‘Plant Chemistry for the Amateur’, Salmanca Republican-Press, 8 July 1941, p. 7;

‘Take Your Home Gardening More Seriously with an Amateur Fling at Plant Chemistry’, Portsmouth Times, 5 March

1941, p. 7; ‘Amateurs Can Contribute to Field of Plant Breeding’, Science News-letter, 14 February 1942, p. 106;

‘Artificially Produced Tetraploid Plants’, Gardening Illustrated, January 1948, pp. 7-8; ‘Wonder Plant-Drug Will Help

You Grow Vegetables’, Chillicothe-Constitution Tribune, 10 March 1949, p. 2.

69 e.g.: Frank Thone, ‘Science Stunts for the Gardener’, Science News-letter, 13 April 1940, pp. 234-6; Thone, op. cit. (64).

70 Thone, op. cit. (64), p. 10.

71 Couch, op. cit. (68), pp. 11, 27.

72 For example, Quest, a popular science magazine produced in Wellesley, Massachusetts advertised colchicine, ‘the

evolution chemical’, and an experimental booklet in the 1940s through the classified of magazines such as Popular

Mechanics and The Science News-letter.

73 Bott, op. cit. (50).

74 Kenneth W. Houghton, ‘Experiments with Colchicine’, Horticulture, 1 January 1940, p. 16.

75 e.g., David Leach, ‘Some Notes on the Induction of Mutation in Rhododendron’, Quarterly Bulletin of the American

Rhododendron Society (1950) 4, online at http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JARS/v4n3/v4n3-leach.htm, accessed 15

March 2013; Rita Cresskill, ‘Supremes with Colchicine’, African Violet Magazine, December 1959, p. 9.

76 Editorial, ‘Colchicine and Double Diploids’, Journal of Heredity (1937) 28, p. 411.

77 Editorial, ‘Colchicine a Dangerous Drug’, Journal of Heredity (1938) 29, p. 188.

78 ‘Colchicine Experimenters Warned of Possible Danger’, Science News-letter, 14 December 1940, p. 382.

79 Gordon Morrison, ‘Facts About Colchicine’, Gardeners' Chronicle of America, October 1939, p. 297.

80 e.g., F. F. Rockwell, ‘'Round About the Garden’, New York Times, 24 July 1938, 38; Philip H. Smith, ‘No Short-Cut

Horticulture’, Scientific American, September 1940, p. 140.

81 A review of research undertaken by 1940 indicates the extent of the ‘fad’: Haig Dermen, ‘Colchicine Polyploidy and

Technique’, Botanical Review (1940) 6, pp. 599-635.

41

82 See discussion in Denis J. Murphy, Plant Breeding and Biotechnology: Societal Context and the Future of Agriculture,

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 39-40.

83 See for example of professional recommendation of colchicine breeding for amateurs working with flowers: Carl D.

Clayberg, ‘A Guide for the Plant Breeder’, Plants and Gardens (1974) 30, pp. 14-15.

84 e.g. Morgan T. Riley, ‘Colchicine’, in Dahlias: What Is Known About Them, New York: Orange Judd 1947), 149-52;

Betty F. Thomson, ‘New Kinds of Plants by Chemical Treatment’, Plants and Gardens, Summer 1948, pp. 117-23; A.

B. Kennerly, ‘New Plants on Order’, Popular Mechanics, June 1961, pp. 132-3, 236.

85 Dorothy Johnson Callaway, The World of Magnolias, Portland: Timber Press, 1994, pp. 191-3; Robert Connell Clarke,

Marijuana Botany: Propagation and Breeding of Distinctive Varieties, Berkeley: Ronin, 1993, p. 61-62.

86 Recognition of this particular distinction between horticultural and agricultural production dates to at least as early

as Hugo de Vries’ mutation theory. See Hugo de Vries, The Mutation Theory, vol. I, New York: Open Court, 1909.

87 On this search for novel forms, especially in relation to the use of mutagens, see Kingsbury, op. cit. (38), pp. 348-

354.

88 John James, Create New Flowers and Plants... Indoors and Out, Garden City: Doubleday, 1964.

89 James, op. cit. (88), p. 128.

90 James, op. cit. (88), pp. 127-36.

91 James P. Haworth, Plant Magic, Portland: Binfords & Mort, 1946, p. xiii.

92 Haworth, op. cit. (91), pp. 102-3, 119.

93 Haworth, op. cit. (91), pp. xiv-xv.

94 Haworth, op. cit. (91), p. xiv.

95 Haworth, op. cit. (91), p., xvi.

96 James, op. cit. (88), pp. xv, 61.

97 On scientific debates over the genetic effects of radiation, see John Beatty, ‘Weighing the Risks: Stalemate in the

Classical/Balance Controversy’, Journal of the History of Biology (1987) 20, p. 289-319; John Beatty, ‘Masking

42

Disagreement Among Experts’, Episteme (2006) 3, pp. 52-67; Jacob Darwin Hamblin, ‘“A Dispassionate and

Objective Effort”: Negotiating the First Study on the Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation’, Journal of the History of

Biology (2007) 40, pp. 147-77. On mutation in popular culture in the Cold War and after, see Jospeh Masco, ‘Mutant

Ecologies: Radioactive Life in Post-Cold War New Mexico’, Cultural Anthropology (2004) 19, pp. 517-550. On other

aspects of the atom and nuclear science in popular culture, see Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought

and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, New York: Pantheon, 1985; Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of

Images, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988.

98 C. L. Strong, ‘The Amateur Scientist: Some Experiments on the Effects of Ionizing Radiation on Plants’, Scientific

American, December 1963, pp. 151-9.

99 For an overview of AEC efforts to promote peaceful uses of atomic energy, especially in light of popular

perceptions of nuclear development, see Boyer, op. cit. (97), ch. 24; also Richard Hewlett and Oscar Edward

Anderson, The New World, 1939-1946, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962, esp. pp. 233-70

and Richard Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953-1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy

Commission, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. For an overview of radiation biology research in the

atomic age, see Angela N. H. Creager and María Santesmases, ‘Radiobiology in the Atomic Age: Changing Research

Practices and Policies in Comparative Perspective’, Journal of the History of Biology (2006) 39, pp 637-47. On the

promotion of nuclear techniques in agriculture, see Curry, op. cit. (47), ch. 6-7; Jacob Darwin Hamblin, ‘Let There

Be Light... And Bread: The United Nations, the Developing World, and Atomic Energy's Green Revolution.’ History

and Technology (2009) 25, pp. 25-48.

100 The primary purpose of these programs was to provide irradiation services to agricultural experiment stations. This

was, however, one route recommended by James, and given the extent of the seed- and plant- irradiation activities at

these two laboratories, it is easy to believe that their services were in fact more widely used. See description of the

Oak Ridge Program: T. S. Osborne and A. O. Lunden, ‘The Cooperative Plant and Seed Irradiation Program of the

University of Tennessee’, International Journal of Applied Radiation and Isotopes (1961) 10, pp. 198-209. On work at

Brookhaven, see: Arnold H. Sparrow and W. Ralph Singleton, ‘The Use of Radiocobalt as a Source of Gamma Rays

and Some Effects of Chronic Irradiation on Growing Plants’, American Naturalist (1953) 87, pp. 29-48. Or, for

popular report: Byron Porterfield, ‘Atom-Farm Crops Mutated by Rays’, New York Times, 30 July 1958, p. 31.

43

101 Dr. Speas’ ad: ‘Dr. Speas' Atomic Energized Seeds and Plants’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 14 April 1961, p. 19. Breck’s ad:

‘Breck's New Atomic Seeds!’ New York Times, 19 March 1961, p. X24.

102 On popular interest in atomic science (and government or scientific encouragement of this interest), and especially

the advances in technologies of everyday life that atomic research was said to make possible, see Weart, op. cit. (97),

pp. 155-74.

103 e.g., Bill Gold, ‘The District Line: A New Horticultural Roulette Game’, Washington Post, 17 February 1959, p. B18;

Earl Aronson, ‘The Weeders Guide: Atomic Irradiated Seeds Produce Striking Plants’, Hartford Courant, 12

November 1960, p. 5; Richard Orr, ‘The Home Garden: 'Atomic' Seeds a New Novelty’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 13

April 1961, p. S13.

104 ‘Atomic Plants to be Exhibited at Cleveland Show’, New Castle News, 23 February 1961, p. 9.

105 On the Atomic Gardening Society, see Paige Johnson, ‘Safeguarding the Atom: the Nuclear Enthusiasm of Muriel

Howorth’, British Journal for the History of Science (2012) 45, pp. 551-71.

106 There were some negative reactions to colchicine, for example, such as the popular garden writer Katherine White

in 1959 on having to read about chromosomes in her garden catalogs. Essay collected in: Katharine White, Onward

and Upward in the Garden, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979, p. 28. Or a reader of Horticulture, complaining

about housewives obsessed with chemicals and gardens turned into laboratories: Richard Wright, ‘Richard Wright

Asks a Question’, Horticulture, 1 January 1940, p. 12. These, however, appeared to be outliers.

107 The journalist Jack Hitt’s recent Bunch of Amateurs takes such an approach to various amateur enterprises in

American history. See Hitt op. cit. (2).

108 Robert E. Kohler, ‘A Generalist’s Vision’, Isis (2005) 96: pp. 224-29. This vision for the history of science is further

explored in Robert E. Kohler and Kathryn M. Olesko, ‘Introduction: Clio Meets Science’, Osiris, 2nd Series (2012)

27, pp. 1-16.

109 Daniel Charles, Lords of the Harvest: Biotech, Big Money, and the Future of Food, Cambridge: Perseus Pub., 2001; Paul F.

Lurquin, The Green Phoenix: A History of Genetically Modified Plants, New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.

110 On the early debates over the dangers of applied molecular biological research, including especially debates over

recombinant DNA, see: Rae S. Goodell, ‘Public Involvement in the DNA Controversy: The Case of Cambridge,

44

Massachusetts’, Science, Technology, and Human Values (1979) 4, pp. 36-43; Sheldon Krimsky, Genetic Alchemy: The Social

History of the Recombinant DNA Controversy, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1982; Susan Wright, ‘Molecular Politics in Great

Britain and the United States: The Development of Policy for Recombinant DNA Technology’, Southern California

Law Review (1978) 51, pp. 1383-1434. On the history of food-related anti-GM activities, see Rachel Schurman and

William A. Munro, Fighting for the Future of Food: Activists Versus Agribusiness in the Struggle over Biotechnology,

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.

111 Freeman Dyson, ‘Our Biotech Future’, New York Review of Books, 19 July 2007, online at

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jul/19/our-biotech-future, accessed 11 June 2012.

112 e.g., Kloppenburg, op. cit. (19), p. 2.