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  • Historical Commentary
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Technical matters: method, knowledge and infrastructure in twentieth-century life science

Nature Methods volume 6, pages 701–705 (2009)Cite this article

Conceptual breakthroughs in science tend to garner accolades and attention. But, as the invention of tissue culture and the development of isotopic tracers show, innovative methods open up new fields and enable the solution of longstanding problems.

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Figure 1: Aseptic technique in tissue culture before laminar flow hoods.
Figure 2: Worker loading uranium slugs into the face of the graphite reactor, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA, 2 January 1952.
Figure 3: Chart of the cumulative number of curies shipped from Oak Ridge to laboratories, hospitals and companies by the US Atomic Energy Commission, 1946–1955.
Figure 4: Melvin Calvin and his apparatus for growing algal cells in 14C-labeled carbon dioxide to trace the photosynthetic pathway.

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Acknowledgements

The historical research on which a portion of this essay was based was supported by a grant to A.N.H.C. from the US National Institutes of Health through the National Library of Medicine, grant number 5G13LM009100.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Angela N.H. Creager is at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA. creager@princeton.edu,

    Angela N H Creager

  2. Hannah Landecker is at the University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA. landecker@soc.ucla.edu,

    Hannah Landecker

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Creager, A., Landecker, H. Technical matters: method, knowledge and infrastructure in twentieth-century life science. Nat Methods 6, 701–705 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth1009-701

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