Roni Armon

ronyarmon[at]biu.013.net.il

Background

My research career began at the Department of Biochemistry of Tel Aviv University. In my Masters work I established a protocol that employs evolutionary data for the location of functional sites on biological molecules. The research project involved basic programming skills that were acquired during two terms of studies at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The protocol was further developed and is used by researchers in molecular biology that work on protein structures.

In the years 1996-2003 I was working with organizations for social change. I worked as a campaigner and as a spokesperson for the Green Action organization and participated in campaigns against unsustainable exploitation of public land and natural resources. Following the anti-WTO demonstrations that took place in Seattle in November 1999 we established an informal group dedicated to organizing public events, demonstrations, and seminars on the social impacts of the global economy. I led the establishment of an independent media group (“Indymedia”) and an activist resource center and library (“Salon Mazal”) in Tel Aviv.

In 2003 I began a doctorate course at the Graduate Program for Science, Technology, and Society at the Bar Ilan University. My dissertation is a scientific biography of the biochemist Joseph Needham (1900-1995). For that I worked in his archive at the Cambridge University Library as a visiting scholar of the History and Philosophy of Science Department. I also visited the archives of the research institutes with which Needham collaborated. In writing the dissertation I am tackling the problem of writing a biography of a person while keeping the reader informed on the larger network on which scientific discoveries and failures depend.



Future Plans

Research

The dissertation is in an advanced stage of writing. Following its submission I would like to prepare it for publication in a form of an intellectual biography. I plan to expand on the historical and philosophical aspects of Needham’s work, and to examine his science in relation to his personal life, science in Cambridge, and the scientific and intellectual cultures of interwar Britain. Already during his scientific career Needham devoted much of his intellectual efforts to the history and philosophy of science. His publications reflect major philosophical concerns of scientists in the interwar period: the definition of life, the reducibility of biology to physics and chemistry, the conflict between science and religion, and the social role of the scientist. Needham was involved in attempts to link science to broader social and philosophical concerns. These intellectual quests and public involvements explain his transition from science to its history, the important role he played in the establishment of history of science as a discipline, his contribution to the establishment of UNESCO, and his approach to the study of Chinese science. Needham’s research on China was discussed and debated by many scholars, whereas his scientific research – no less monumental – has been nearly ignored. His interwar historical, philosophical, and social concerns also all left their mark on our intellectual heritage. Needham was among the pioneers of the molecular approach to biology, which took shape in Cambridge with the discovery of DNA and protein structures. Needham promoted the study of the history of science, and became one of the founders of the discipline. Both his interwar science and philosophy were at the roots of his work on science and civilization in China. But despite Needham’s scientific and intellectual involvements there has been no comprehensive historical study of Needham’s intellectual life. In expanding my dissertation for publication I plan to write this chapter in the scientific and intellectual history of interwar Britain.

I would than like to move my research in a new and more focused direction and examine the industrial relations of biochemistry in interwar Britain. The institutional history of the life sciences was anchored in developments on the farm, the hospital, and the factory. But the traditional historization of biochemistry, genetics and physiology describes their development as independent and detached disciplines. I plan to examine the history of biochemical genetics, the interrelation of nutrition science and biochemistry, and the role of industrial scientists in conceptualizing protein chemistry and structure, in order to map the influences of technical development and industrial demand on the production of scientific knowledge.

Education

In the future I wish to address public concerns with the social, economical and political relations of science and technology. I wish to develop the teaching of topics related to science and society to non-specialist student audiences. During the winter semester of 2005 I taught a course on "Science, Technology, and Society" (STS), to BA students in the Kibuzim College of Education (Tel Aviv). The course discussed the definition of social needs by competing groups of experts, media professionals, state officials, and corporate executives. The students wrote a seminar in which they analyzed social problems for the social groups involved in their definition and in their technological solutions. I hope to establish similar STS courses in other professional colleges, and to engage their students of education, law, management, and science, with the social implications of their future work.


Publications

Armon A, Graur D, and Ben-Tal N (2001) ConSurf: an algorithmic tool for the identification of functional regions in proteins by surface mapping of phylogenetic information. Journal of Molecular Biology, 307(1):447-63.

Rony Armon, 2007, "Writing biographies and autobiographies of science", Minerva 45 (3): 295-304.

Conference Presentations

Scientists and Networks: Hardships in the Writing of Intellectual Biographies of 20th Century Biomolecular Scientists. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Israel Society for History & Philosophy of Science, Science Museum, Jerusalem, March 2006.

Joseph Needham, the mechanist/vitalist debate and the origins of biochemistry, 1922-42. Paper presented at the “Scientists and Social Commitment” of the British Society for the History of Science, Science Museum, London, September 2006.

The Chemical Embryology of Joseph Needham: A Biography of a Scientific Dead End. Presented at the annual conference of the British Society of the History of Science, Manchester, July 2007.

Colloid Chemistry and the Mechanist Conception of Life: A Physical Challenge to Physical Reductionism. Presented at the Biennial Meeting of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology, Exeter (Great Britain), July, 2007.


Brief Precis of My Dissertation

Scientific Dead Ends – The Biochemistry of Joseph Needham

Joseph Needham (1900-1995) is known for his monumental tome on science and civilization in China. Needham began this project in the 1950s and it spanned the rest of his life. For Needham, however, the history of science was a second career. In the years 1920-1950 he worked at the Cambridge Biochemical Laboratory and established an ambitious research program. This program, titled “Chemical Embryology” aimed at applying biochemical techniques in the study of embryonic development. The new research school had all the resources needed to become an established discipline. His founder held a coveted position in a leading European university. His theories supplied experimental opportunities to a host of fellow biochemists, and their experimental results were published in dozens of papers in leading scientific journals. Needham’s encyclopedic books on the topic gained his program international recognition.

But when Needham left biochemical research in the early 1940s the research school faded. His theories practically vanished from the discourse of the developmental research community, and his studies were only mentioned by few of his students and collaborators. Most of them became significant figures in embryological and biochemical research, but neither continued in the experimental course that Needham led. The program failed despite Needham’s impressive efforts, his international reputation, and his rich collaborative network. In an attempt to understand how this came to pass, my thesis examines the successes and obstacles encountered in the development of a chemical approach to embryology. It is based on work in the Needham archive at the Cambridge University Library and in archives of the research institutes with which Needham collaborated. Hundreds of correspondence files, research notes, laboratory notebooks, and personal diaries allowed me to reconstruct his extraordinary scientific biography – a path of success and frustrations, international fame and scientific dead ends.

The history of science is a history of winners and leaders. Historians tend to ignore failures and dead ends despite their being an important feature of any scientific venture, weather successful or not. The scientific biography of Needham, a leader that failed, will hopefully contribute to our understanding of the function of science and the choice of one path over another in the investigation of the natural world.