Totems de laboratoires, microscopes électroniques et réseaux scientifiques : L'émergence de la biologie moléculaire à Genève (1945-1960) / Laboratory totems, electron microscopes, and scientific networks : The emergence of molecular biology in Geneva (1945-1960)

摘要

SUMMARY. — Between 1945 and 1960, a new set of practices, instruments and research subjects, which lay at the boundaries between biology, physics and medicine, were developed in Geneva. During the whole period, this configuration, at the time called biophysics, was transformed and redefined. Around I960, it finally achieved the status of an autonomous scientific discipline, which was named molecular biology. Three factors account for this expansion. First, a small biophysics group built an institutional space by establishing a dense network of collaboration. Centered on the use of the electron microscope, this network linked various disciplines within the institution. Inside this institutional « bubble », the biophysicists were able to develop new areas of research, such as microbial genetics. Secondly, the group developed inside a transnational space, which consisted of a worldwide exchange network that allowed the circulation of ideas, practices, scientists, and bacterial strains. In this way, the Geneva group could escape from any dependence on local research traditions and material resources. Third, the electron microscope played the role of a « laboratory totem », by defining the disciplinary identity of the biophysics group within the institution, by insuring its social order, and by allowing it to build its interdisciplinary and transnational networks. I attempt to demonstrate more generally the role that instruments can play in the formation of new scientific disciplines.