Allen died on February 10, 2023, at the age of 86.[6]
Thomas Hunt Morgan
Allen offered the fullest treatment of the life and work of Thomas Hunt Morgan, himself a Kentucky native. Allen's extensive review of Morgan presented the story of an experimentalist who staunchly avoided open political ties to science for fear of biasing the research. His discussion of the fly room, first at Columbia, then at Caltech, suggests that the collaborative environment within which Morgan worked with his students, H.J. Muller, Alfred Sturtevant, Calvin Bridges, and Theodosius Dobzhansky played an important role in establishing Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism for genetics, and launching the careers of these titans of 20th century genetics.[7] Allen's work contributes to the body of history chronicling the emergence of American science.
Eugenics
Allen was an international leader on the history of eugenics.[8] His work suggests that eugenics movements were not merely localized to Germany, Britain and America, but rather that eugenics constituted an international ideological shift from social Darwinism, whereby nature would weed out people with poor heredity, to an ideology where humanity must control its own genetic stock.[9] He suggested that with the unveiling of the human genome, we should be cautious of a new wave of the eugenics movement.[10]
Works
Matter, Energy, and Life (4 Editions)
Life Sciences in the 20th Century (1975)
Thomas Hunt Morgan: The Man and his Science (1978)[11]
Biology: Scientific Process and Social Issues (2002)
^Coleman, William (Dec 1979). "Reviewed Work: Thomas Hunt Morgan: The Man and His Science by Garland E. Allen". The American Historical Review. 84 (5): 1494. doi:10.2307/1861696. JSTOR1861696.