Sic Transit Gloria

Illustration: A. Canamucio I came to this country in 1969, trying to be a pathology resident. After finishing my residency, I decided to try my hand at research. Deep down I suspect that I used it as a ruse to prolong my already long apprenticeship and delay having to make an honest living as a practicing pathologist. A particularly influential event that convinced me to enroll in the immunology program rather than any other was a journal club presentation by Frank Lilly, who was then chairman of genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The paper that Frank presented was a somewhat theoretical argument by Niels Jerne,1,2 on a possible model for the emergence of the bewilderingly large repertoire of antigen recognition apparently inherent in the mammalian immune system.3 The argument presented by Jerne was at once so talmudically convoluted and improbably lucid that I felt compelled to work in a field that tolerated--perhaps even celebrated--such abstractions that seemed incapable of proof. Over the next few years, I realized that Jerne's contributions to immunology were impressively diverse and extended beyond what was then called the Jerne hypothesis. He had developed one of the first quantitative assays in cellular immunology, the Jerne plaque assay, and was later to enunciate and popularize a model far more complex and incomprehensible than the Jerne hypothesis, namely the network theory of immune regulation. Not surprisingly, he received the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1984 for his contributions. Thirty years after those events, I continue to be in an immunology graduate program, though I'm no longer a lowly resident transitioning into a graduate student, but a senior faculty member. From time to time, more from curiosity than any other specific reason, I ask the graduate students whether the name Niels Jerne means anything to them. By and large this question evokes an embarrassed silence. I get the feeling that the students think that they should know the name, because I am raising the question. But very few students have heard of Nils Jerne in the last 10 years that I have been in the immunology program at the University of Connecticut Health Center. I am not suggesting even for a moment that my own knowledge of the history of my field is better than that of the students. There is little doubt but that my familiarity with the work of Jerne is an idiosyncratic reflection of the circumstances under which I entered immunology and the currency of his ideas at that time. Not long ago, for instance, I ran into a colleague who works in the bone marrow transplant unit in this institution. She mentioned that she had recently returned from a meeting at which a featured speaker had been Donnall Thomas.4,5 The blank look on my face must have alerted her to the fact that I had no clue as to whom she was referring. She smiled wryly and said, "surely you must have heard of him; he got the Nobel Prize in 1990 for his contributions to transplantation."6,7 The truth is, not only did I not know that Donnall Thomas had indeed been awarded the Nobel Prize, I did not even know that had ever been a prize given for developments in transplantation. I have no doubt but that she was appalled by my lack of recognition of Thomas' name. I do not know how representative of scientists I am or the graduate students in immunology program at the UConn Health Center are, but I get the feeling that we scientists in general are not terribly well informed of the historical background to our fields. Perhaps I am just being ignorant of the creative process, but I suspect that one can, limited only by one's ability or the lack of it, conjure up a good idea for a book or a painting or a piece of music, and compose the book or the painting or the piece of music more or less sui generis. It seems to me that creative artists do not really need precedents, do not need someone to impart to them arcane knowledge, to make substantial and original contributions in their own fields. Science, or so I think, is fundamentally different. Sir Isaac Newton, the man who most of us with any knowledge of science will probably acknowledge, without much debate, as one of the greatest intellects in the history of mankind, is reputed to have said, "If I see further than others, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants." It is a statement of the most becoming humility, because I suspect that Newton would have seen further than all the rest of us even if he had been placed metaphorically in the bottom of a giant hole. He had the grace to acknowledge the discoveries of the people before him and the impact of those discoveries had on his own work. T. V. Rajan Surely the rest of us, with our more pedestrian talents, need realize as well that the work of people before us has permitted us to add our little bricks to the edifice of scientific knowledge. As faculty members involved in the development of curricula, we argue incessantly about what graduate students need to know in order to be competent scientists. With the explosion of knowledge in all areas of biomedical science, each specialist bemoans that their own circumscribed area of arcana is underrepresented in the curriculum. Yet, I know that at least in the institution where I work, no one seems to think that some education about the philosophical and historical roots of science is at least as important as the mass of data that we deem important as a base for building a career in science. Should we perhaps insist that graduate students learn the history of science or at least the history of their own discipline before embarking on such careers? S T.V. Rajan (rajan@cortex.uchc.edu), M.D., Ph.D., is Boehringer Ingelheim professor and chairman, department of pathology, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington. References 1. Early work includes N.K. Jerne, "The natural-selection theory of antibody formation," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 41:849-56, 1955. 2. His review, N.K. Jerne, "Towards a network theory of immune system," Annales D Immunologie, C125[1-2]:373-89, 1974, has been cited in 2,624 papers. 3. N.K. Jerne, "Antibody Dilemma," Vox Sanguinis, 16:256, 1969. 4. A. Martello, "North American scientists sweep this year's Nobel Prizes," The Scientist, 4[22]:8, Nov. 12, 1990. 5. A. Martello, "Citation histories attest to 1990 Nobelists' wide influence," The Scientist, 4[22]:16, Nov. 26, 1990. 6. E.D. Thomas et al., "Bone-marrow transplantation: 1," New England Journal of Medicine, 292:832-43, 1975, cited in 1,795 papers. 7. E.D. Thomas et al., "Bone-marrow transplantation: 2," NEJM, 292:895-902, 1975, cited in 1,230 papers. Sic Transit Gloria = Thus passes away the glory

Sic Transit Gloria

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