Gunther S. Stent Papers, 1915-1998

Summary

Creators:

Stent, Gunther S.

Extent:

Number of containers: 65 cartons, 10 tubes, 3 oversize folders Linear feet: 92.5

Language:

English

Background

Scope and content:

The Gunther S. Stent Papers reflect the varied functions of Stent's life as a research scientist, teacher, mentor, administrator, editor, and author. His career spanned a period of profound changes in the life sciences, and his eclectic interests encompassed not only science, but history and philosophy as well. His papers richly document the process of scientific and scholarly collaboration in the developing field of molecular biology, and later in neurobiology. He was acquainted with virtually everyone in his field, and his papers include correspondence and manuscripts from many of the leading scientists of the 20th Century, including Werner Arber, Francis Crick, Max Delbrück, D. Carleton Gajdusek, Alfred Day Hershey, François Jacob, Niels Kaj Jerne, André Lwoff, S. E. Luria, Jacques Monod, and James D. Watson, to name only a few.

Stent's papers demonstrate the foresight with which he preserved a wide range of documents, which give clear evidence of his professional activities and private concerns. One particularly rich series is his correspondence. Stent's out-going correspondence is distinguished by a clear and elegant epistolary style. In addition to Stent's main correspondence files, found in Series 1, there is more correspondence filed throughout the collection. For example, correspondence associated with a book or an article is usually filed with that book or article in Series 2, the Publications series. The collection also contains a representative sampling of manuscripts which were not published.

Not present in his papers are Stent's lecture notes, many of which were incorporated into chapters of his published textbooks. The absence of systematic documentation of his teaching materials is partly offset by his collection of 57 hand-drawn instructional wall charts. Some charts have figure numbers matching illustrations in the second edition of his textbook, Molecular Genetics (1978). The charts were used and modified year after year. Also missing from the Stent Papers are his laboratory notes, except for those written early in his career, between 1948 and 1952, when he held fellowships abroad.

Smaller series include University of California Departments and Committees, Professional Activities and Organizations, and Personalia. The final series, Reprints by Others, is an extensive and valuable collection of scholarly papers authored by Stent's colleagues, collaborators and correspondents. The collected reprints are noteworthy for their breadth as well as their depth. When taken in aggregate, they provide an overview of molecular biology research being done internationally in the middle decades of the 20th Century.

Biographical / historical:

Gunther S. Stent was born in 1924 in Treptow, a suburb of Berlin, where his father owned one of the largest bronze statuary and light-fixture factories in Germany. After the Kristallnacht, he escaped from Germany, traveling first to England, and then to the United States. He graduated in 1942 from Hyde Park High School in Chicago. He received a B.S. in 1945, and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 1948, both from the University of Illinois. He joined the University of California, Berkeley faculty as an Assistant Research Biochemist in 1953.

His scientific career was influenced by Max Delbrück, a quantum physicist who had trained with Neils Bohr. Delbrück was one of several physicists who had crossed over into biology in hopes of discovering new laws of physics and chemistry. Stent joined Delbrück's laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in 1948 as a Merck Fellow. He became an enthusiastic member of what became known as the Phage Group, whose members pioneered the study of bacterial genetics and a new understanding of fundamental biological processes. In 1950-1951, he worked at the University of Copenhagen and the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where he collaborated with other ground-breaking scientists of his generation, many of whom later became Nobel Laureates.

Stent's book, Phage and theOrigins of Molecular Biology (1966, 1992), chronicles the 30-year period prior to the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953. Stent himself has made significant contributions in three areas: molecular biology, neurobiology, and the history and philosophy of science. Among his writings on molecular biology, his textbook Molecular Genetics: An Introductory Narrative (1970, 1978), is regarded as a classic. As a neurobiologist, he published over 100 articles on leech neurophysiology and neuroanatomy, and edited Function and Formation of Neural Systems (1977), and The Neurobiology of the Leech (1981). Stent's writings in the history and philosophy of science, which attracted both a professional and popular readership, include "What they are saying about Honest Jim" (1968), an essay inspired by James D. Watson's publication of The Double Helix; and the widely discussed "Prematurity and Uniqueness in Scientific Discovery" (1972), among others.

With James D. Watson, Stent edited A Critical Edition of the Double Helix (1980), which appended a variety of articles and reviews by his colleagues that discussed Watson's controversial account of his discovery. Stent dedicated several books to his mentor, Max Delbrück, including The Molecular Biology of Bacterial Viruses (1963), and Mind from Matter : An Evolutionary Epistemology (1986). The latter, which Stent edited and published after Delbrück's death in 1981, is a collection of his lectures delivered at the California Institute of Technology. In 1998, Stent published an autobiographical memoir entitled Nazis,Women and Molecular Biology, which centers on his early years in the United States and his return to post-war Germany in 1946-1947.

During Stent's long tenure at the University of California, Berkeley, he played an instrumental role in the process of shaping and developing new departments and programs, leading to the establishment of the Department of Virology in 1957, and the Department of Molecular Biology in 1963. From 1980 to 1986, he was the Director of the Virus Laboratory and Chair of the Department of Molecular Biology. From 1987-1992, he served as founding Chair of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. While at Berkeley, he mentored several generations of molecular biologists and neurobiologists.

Date	Event
1924	Born March 24, Berlin, Germany
1940	Arrives in United States
1945	B.S., University of Illinois
1946-1947	Document Analyst, Field Information Agency, Technical (Office of Military Government for Germany [U.S.])
1948	Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry, University of Illinois
1948-1950	National Research Council, Merck Fellow at California Institute of Technology
1950-1952	National Research Council and American Cancer Society Fellow at the University of Copenhagen and at the Pasteur Institute, Paris
1951	Marries Inga Loftsdottir
1952	Joins staff of Wendell M. Stanley's Virus Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, as Assistant Research Biochemist
ca. 1953	Joins Graduate Group in Microbiology
1956	Promoted to Associate Professor of Bacteriology
1958	Joins Graduate Group in Genetics
1959	Promoted to Professor of Molecular Biology
1959-1964	Member of Genetics Study Section, National Institutes of Health
1960-1961	National Science Foundation, Senior Fellow at Virus Research Institute, Kyoto University and at Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University
1963	Publishes The Molecular Biology of Bacterial Viruses
1966	Chairman of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Neurobiology Publishes Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology, with James D. Watson and John Cairns, in honor of Max Delbrück's 60th birthday
1966	Appointed external member of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin, Germany
1968	Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1969-1970	Guggenheim Fellow at Department of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School
1969	Publishes The Coming of the Golden Age: A View of the End of Progress
1970	Publishes textbook, Molecular Genetics, An Introductory Narrative
1972	Chairman of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Neurobiology
1975-1993	Member of Basic Research Advisory Committee, March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation
1977	Publishes Paradoxes of Progress Publishes A Critical Edition of J. D. Watson's The Double Helix
1980-1986	Chairman of Molecular Biology and Director of the Virus Laboratory
1981	Publishes Neurobiology of the Leech, co-edited with K. J. Muller and J. C. Nicholls Publishes Shinri to Satori; Kagaku no Keiji-Jogaku to Toyo (Truth and Spiritual Awakening; Metaphysics of Science and Oriental Philosophy)
1981-1983	Chairman of Joint UCB-UCSF Governing Board, Health and Medical Sciences Program
1982	Elected member of the National Academy of Sciences
1982-1985	Member of Committee on Space Biology and Medicine, Space Sciences Board
1984	Elected member of the American Philosophical Society
1985-1989	Advisory Board, Dahlem Konferenzen, Berlin
1985-1990	Fellow of Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
1986	Co-chair of University of California, Berkeley-University of California, San Francisco Joint Medical Program
1986-1989	Chair, Neurobiology Section of the National Academy of Sciences
1987-1992	Founding Chair, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
1989-1996	Features Editor, Journal of Neuroscience
1990-1991	Fogarty Scholar-in-Residence, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland
1994	Professor Emeritus of Neurobiology and Professor in the Graduate School
1998	Publishes autobiographical memoir, Nazis, Women and Molecular Biology

Acquisition information:

The Gunther S. Stent Papers were given to The Bancroft Library by Gunther S. Stent on August 12, 1996. Additions were made on November 6, 1997, February 9 and July 8, 1998, and July 21, 1999.

Physical location:

For current information on the location of these materials, please consult the Library's online catalog.

Location of this collection:

UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

University of California, Berkeley, The Bancroft Library

Berkeley, CA 94720-6000, US

Contact:

510-642-6481

bancref-library@berkeley.edu

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