Living Matter Under the Microscope: Protoplasm Theory, “wissenschaftliche Mikroskopie,” and the Molecularization of Cell Structure, 1840–1940
Final Report Abstract
From the 1860s to the 1940s protoplasm theory existed alongside cell theory and Darwinian evolution as one of the three core theoretical foundations of modern biology. During this period biologists of all sorts were unanimous in identifying protoplasm—the moving, reactive, and metabolizing part of the cell—as “living matter” and the material substrate of life itself. The objectives of the proposed project are: 1. Reconstruct the history of protoplasm theory’s development, decline, and impact on the life sciences; 2. Situate the history of cell and protoplasm theory in the technical and social history of “wissenschaftliche Mikroskopie” as the latter developed into an independent, auxiliary science in the German-speaking lands; and 3. Show how protoplasm theory and microscopy were important routes through which theories and methods in the physical sciences were brought into the life sciences, therefore laying the groundwork for post-WWII molecular and structural biology.
Publications
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Depicting a cellular space occupied by condensates. Molecular Biology of the Cell, 34(10).
Liu, Daniel; Riggi, Margot; Lee, Hyun O.; Currie, Simon L.; Goodsell, David S.; Iwasa, Janet H. & Rog, Ofer
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Karl S. Matlin, Crossing the Boundaries of Life: Günter Blobel and the Origins of Molecular Cell Biology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022, ISBN: 9780226819235, 368 pp. Journal of the History of Biology, 56(2), 411-414.
Liu, Daniel
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The Elementary Organisms. Journal of the History of Biology, 57(2), 305-330.
Brücke, Ernst & Liu, Daniel
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The Schema and Organization of the Cell: An Introduction to Ernst Brücke’s Die Elementarorganismen (1861). Journal of the History of Biology, 57(2), 281-304.
Liu, Daniel
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“Confronting the Limits of Optical Interpretation: Some Philosophical Considerations of Microscopic Details.” In Milieus of Minutiae: Contextualizing the Small in Literature, Philosophy, and Science, edited by Elizabeth Brogden and Christiane Frey, 122–48. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2024, ISBN 978-0-8139-5064-8
Daniel Liu
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“Investigating a ‘Coulomb Torsion Balance with Modifications’ in the Collections of the Deutsches Museum, Munich.” Scientific Instrument Society Blog, November 21, 2024
Elisabetta Rossi, Daniel Liu, Julien Gressot & Jesse Garrison
