Haldane was a precocious child and was educated at Eton, where he became Captain of the school, and New College,Oxford where he was awarded a first-class honours degree in 1914. He had already co-authored a paper with his father in 1912. During the First World War, Haldane was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion of the Black Watch and rose to the rank of captain for his service in France and the Middle East. He left the army in April of 1920 and became a Fellow of New College, where he worked in the research of genetics and physiology. In 1922, he received a readership in Biochemistry at Trinity College, Cambridge and taught there until 1932, the year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1933, he moved to University College London where he was appointed Professor of Genetics and in 1937, became the first Weldon Professor of Biometry. In 1956, Haldane moved to India and joined the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta and later became an Indian citizen. Often involved in controversy; socialist, then communist supporter, Marxist, but eventually becoming critical of most of his earlier-held views. His many publications include Daedalus; or, Science and the Future (1923), Possible Worlds and Other Essays (1927), The Causes of Evolution (1932), Fact and Faith (1934), My Friend Mr. Leakey (1937), Science in Peace and War (1941), Adventures of a Biologist (1947), Everything Has a History (1951) and Origin of Man (1955). |
