A Dominant Character: How J. B. S. Haldane Transformed Genetics, Became a Communist, and Risked His Neck for Science Subramanian Samanth

J. B. S. He is best remembered as a geneticist who revolutionized our understanding of evolution, but his peers hailed him as a polymath. Haldane's life was rich and strange, never short on genius or drama--from his boyhood apprenticeship to his scientist father, who first instilled in him a devotion to the scientific method; to his time in the trenches during the First World War, where he wrote his first scientific paper; to his numerous experiments on himself, including inhaling dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and drinking hydrochloric acid; to his clandestine research for the British Admiralty during the Second World War.

One student called him "the last man who might know all there was to be known."He foresaw in vitro fertilization, peak oil, and the hydrogen fuel cell, and his contributions ranged over physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, mathematics, and