This thesis examines the development of biology as an academic discipline inManchester from the second half of the nineteenth century until the early 1960s.During the late nineteenth century, as has been well documented by a number ofstudies, the life sciences underwent rapid and radical change. However, as thisthesis emphasises, the opening decades of the twentieth century were also crucialto the institutionalization of biology, bringing as they did the rise of appliedbiology and the growth of specialization. Biological departments are the locus ofthe discipline-building process. The changes that transformed biology over thedecades in question are therefore explored as they manifested themselves in thegrowth and development of the Botany and Zoology departments of ManchesterUniversity. The study situates Manchester within the wider national institutionaland disciplinary context and examines the influence of political and economicfactors on Manchester Biology. While others have examined aspects of thehistory of British biology through studies of individual institutions, the presentstudy is the first to explore the particular dynamics involved in building biology ina civic university. The study therefore brings a much needed `provincial'perspective to bear on a national picture characterized by an uneven distribution ofresources. The thesis therefore has broader relevance for the question of thechanging relationship between science, the universities and the state in thetwentieth century.This thesis is concerned with three major currents of change that shaped thecontent and organization of academic biology in the period under study: the `NewBiology' of the late nineteenth century, the rise of applied biology in the earlytwentieth century and the growth of `experimental zoology' in the interwar period.The emphasis is on research, although pedagogical change is also considered atparticular points. The first shift took biology into the laboratory. The rise ofapplied biology led to the mobilization of state funds for biology and widenedcareer opportunities for biologists. The third current is associated withspecialization and the move beyond whole organism biology: for example, to thecellular and molecular levels.
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