In Pursuit of the Gene: An Interview with James Schwartz

A few years ago, a friend suggested I take a look at a new book on the history of genetics written by independent scholar James Schwartz. Since my appetite for this kind of thing appears insatiable, I ordered the book and devoured it over a weekend. In In Pursuit of the Gene, Schwartz examines the brilliance of Mendel and Darwin; eavesdrops on the debates of Galton, Bateson, Pearson, Wendel, and De Vries; alights in the fly room of the early Drosophilists Morgan, Sturtevant, and Bridges; and settles at last on the highly unsettled Hermann Muller. This book is a must-read for anyone who is curious about genetics, and that means you, dear reader! I soon contacted Schwartz (Image 1) for advice on a book project of my own, and our Skype conversation became so animated that I suggested we capture our dialogue with a formal PLOS Genetics interview. This came to pass when Schwartz visited San Francisco last May with his wife, Ann Hochschild (a faculty member of Harvard Medical School), and they kindly agreed to spend the night at my home to squeeze in a face-to-face interview. I discovered that In Pursuit of the Gene was the unintended outgrowth of three articles Schwartz had written on the overarching question of the influence of genes on behavior, which included the sociobiology wars and the mathematical theories of altruism. In the early 2000s, Schwartz’s plan to write a fourth article (on the thencontemporary science of association studies as applied to behavioral genetics) became derailed by a wee-hour discussion with the late David Cox, who pointed out that Hermann Muller had conceived of complex genetic traits decades earlier during his groundbreaking work on Drosophila. Schwartz became so captivated with Muller’s story that he abandoned his article and turned his attention to the early history of genetics. Schwartz may be uniquely suited to illuminate this history. Not only is he a very gifted writer, but he also trained in mathematics, as well as biology. He is also deeply curious about the psychology of the characters of this drama and how their particular personalities and circumstances provided grist for experiments and interpretations. I started out by asking Schwartz how he came to be a writer. Schwartz: As an undergraduate in college I was an English major, but I also did pre-med [pre-medical studies] on the side. I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I was very ambivalent about the pre-med because it was so competitive and so