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Phi Lambda Upsilon
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Brief Biography of Bentley Glass (by R. S. Cox Dr. Glass is the only geneticist to present at the Phillips Lecture Series.
Glass's increasing scientific reputation earned a call to the Department of Biology at Johns Hopkins (1948-1965) and later to the State University of New York at Stony Brook (1965-1976). Despite extensive administrative commitments -- including a six year stint as Academic Vice President at Stony Brook -- Glass was immensely productive throughout the 1950s through 1970s, and by the mid-1990s, his list of publications had grown to over 390. Fittingly, for a man of such productivity, he was also sought after as an editor. Most famously, Glass was the heart and soul of Quarterly Review of Biology for over fifty years, serving as editor, associate editor, and emeritus editor, but he served as well on the editorial boards of Journal of the History of Biology; Journal of the History of Ideas, Isis, and the Mendel Newsletter. Glass was granted emeritus status when he retired from Stony Brook in 1976. The Glass Papers hold promise as a major resource for research into the history and practice of genetics during the latter half of the 20th century, and particularly for the relation of genetics to larger social and governmental structures. Documenting every phase of Glass' career, the collection contains approximately 90 linear feet of correspondence, research notes, publications, and administrative records concentrated in the period beginning with his arrival at Johns Hopkins until the mid-1990s. Because of his extensive academic and administrative commitments, Glass's papers reflect a much broader scope than an interest in the humble Drosophila might imply. His own research is characterized by an inherent interdisciplinarity, mingling an underlying interest in in evolutionary processes, an intense awareness of the social context (and complications) of the genetic enterprise, and an early and avid interest in the history of his discipline. As author of works such as Science and Liberal Education (1960) and Science and Ethical Values (1965), Glass spoke directly to the ethical and social implications of genetic work, and he commented regularly on eugenics and human evolution throughout the 1950s and 1960s. His committee work brought him into regular, intimate contact with the federal government, not only as a grantee, but as consultant, advisor, and occasionally watchdog. For eight years beginning in the mid-1950s, Glass was a member of the AEC Advisory Committee for Biology and Medicine, growing out of his research into the induction of mutations at low levels of radiation, and he became responsible for visiting and reporting on the AEC laboratories at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Hanford, and Brookhaven. In another guise, he was chair of the AAUP Special Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure in the Quest for National Security during the height of the McCarthy era. In part, Glass was responsible for monitoring attempts to censure or expel academics for their political views. Perhaps not coincidentally, he was simultaneously president of the Maryland Chapter of the ACLU (1955-1965). The Glass collection includes particularly thorough documentation -- more than ten linear feet-- of Glass' part in developing standards for biology education in high schools . From his formative years teaching high school biology at Timpson (Texas) High with studying for his masters degree, Glass served on committees such as the Committee on the Teaching of Biology in the Secondary Schools of the United States, the Union of American Biological Societies (1937-42), and the Committee on Science Education (which he chaired, 1967-71). The most important of these appointments was as chair of the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, on which he served for ten years and chaired from 1959 to 1965. The BSCS exerted a profound influence on biological education in American high schools through the three text books they authorized in the early 1960s which came to account for almost half of all the high schools biology texts used in the country. From the 1940s, Glass's attention was often directed to writing
about the history of his profession. Through his editorial activities,
he had a major impact on the writing of the history of genetics
in America both as author and editor, but from the perspective of
Chestnut Street, he is particularly remembered as the Director of
the History of Genetics project from 1977 to 1987. |
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