The long reach of Hermann J. Muller: How Muller influenced the development and content of secondary school biology curricula.

Abstract

The Cold War provided incentive for radiation geneticists from the United States (U.S.) to offer guidance on scientific/public health issues. A notable case involved the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommendations concerning radiation-related heredity/cancer risk assessment, which have guided regulatory agencies from the 1950s to the present. A neglected, generally unknown, yet important strategic direction, involves influence exerted over the development of secondary school biological education programs in the U.S. With U.S. federal government funding, the American Institute for Biological Sciences (AIBS) led the development of a major revision of secondary school biological sciences' curricula, called the Biological Science Curriculum Study (BSCS), with the first education product widely adopted in 1963. The BSCS textbook content was directed by Arnold Grobman and Bentley Glass, leaders of the academic genetics community, especially those who participated in the Manhattan Project and the NAS Genetics Panel and how they engaged the involvement of the Nobel Laureate, Hermann Muller, to transform the actions of the BSCS committee to create an educational framework in which evolution was the overriding and integrative theme. Muller would ensure that the BSCS curriculum was based on the Dobzhansky rubric that "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution." Muller also led these geneticists in a failed attempt to integrate "reform" eugenics principles and practices into the BSCS curriculum While Muller's influence on hereditary/cancer risk assessment has been extraordinary, his role in framing what biology students were taught, and how it would influence their concept of life, beliefs about humanity's place in the universe, and how humans could or should direct their evolution, has remained largely unknown.