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Immunology and Cell Biology (1999) 77, 468
Book Review
THE BIRTH OF THE CELL
Henry Harris. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1999. 212
pages. Price: US$30.
It has been said that ‘the cell is to biology what the molecule
is to chemistry — it is the lowest common denominator of all
life, the unit beyond which one cannot pass in simplification
without losing the essential capacity for continued survival
and reproduction.’ This is true for whatever domain of living
things we study, whether Archaea, Bacteria or Eucarya, and
viruses can survive only if they can infect cells. Apart from
microbiology, which concentrates in the two great domains of
microscopic life, the Archaea and the Bacteria, most modern
biomedical science is based on the study of eucaryotic cells.
This is true of neurobiology, developmental biology,
immunology and cancer research, in each of which molecular biology provides the tools for elucidating the biology of
the cell. At a higher level, cell–cell interactions are of critical
importance for the understanding of how organisms function,
whether they be plant or animal.
These days we take the existence of cells for granted. But
it was not always so; indeed, it was not until the middle of last
century that the distinction was made between cytoplasm and
nucleus and it was another 25 years before chromosomes
were recognized. Underlying these new insights were technical advances, initially in microscopy and later in biochemistry. Most cell biologists are aware of these facts, but few
have any notion of how or when the cell theory originated.
There is no longer any excuse for such ignorance.
Henry Harris is a Sydney medical graduate, who until
1992 was Professor of Pathology at the University of Oxford
and was later Regius Professor of Medicine at that University,
and he is one of the most distinguished cell biologists of this
century. An even rarer distinction, in someone who was educated in Australia and has spent his life as a bench scientist,
is that he is an accomplished linguist, capable of reading
books and articles written in French, German and Italian
and providing translations of pertinent passages in English.
He also exhibits a talent, relatively rare among laboratory
scientists, the inclination and ability to write books. These
include a fascinating autobiography, The Balance of Improbabilities (1987), and three books on modern cell biology:
Nucleus and Cytoplasm (1968), Cell Fusion (1970) and The
Cells of the Body (1995). Now comes a classic history of the
origins and development of the cell theory, The Birth of the
Cell. In this book, Harris makes full use of his deep understanding of modern cell biology and his capacity to seek out
and read, in their original languages, all the seminal books
and papers, from the early seventeenth century to the end of
last century. To me, an ignoramus in knowledge of Eucarya,
two things stood out. The first was the extent to which the
early development of knowledge about cells was drawn as
much from the study of plants as of animals and the great
variety of types of each that were used in these early studies.
The second was the domination of the work, until the beginning of the twentieth century, by German, French and Italian
scientists. There were some notable Englishmen in the seventeenth century, particularly Robert Hooke and Nehemiah
Drew, but thereafter hardly an English name appears,
although Robert Brown is credited with first suggesting the
word ‘nucleus’. Americans do not appear on the scene until
the twentieth century.
The book is illustrated with contemporary portraits of 50
of the notable contributors to the development of the cell
theory and there are 18 illustrations of relevant sections or
equipment. For those rare individuals who wish to question
Harris’s translations, he provides the original texts for the
passages translated. There is also a comprehensive list of
references and a good index.
FRANK FENNER
Emeritus Professor
John Curtin School of Medical Research
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT
Australia