ABSTRACT
Few scientific problems have proved as intractable as cryopreservation. In his foreword to this book, Harry Meryman recalls the astonishing shifts in scientific paradigms since the 1950s. If we go back further, to the early 1940s, the differences become even more radical. When the Father of cryobiology, Basil Luyet, published his seminal work Life and Death at Low Temperatures in 1940, Avery had yet to prove that genes are composed of nucleic acids. Even scientists of the calibre of J.B.S. Haldane wrote scornfully that DNA did not have the variability of structure necessary to encode genes and argued that histones were more likely candidates. Yet at this time, Luyet had a strikingly contemporary view of vitrification-still the holy grail of cryobiology. Compare Luyet and Gehenio writing in 1940 with Taylor in Chapter 22 in this volume:
Conceptually, then, little has changed in our understanding of vitrification for more than 60 years. Yet these passages also serve to highlight the tremendous distance that cryobiology has actually covered since the 1940s. Luyet and Gehenio conceded failure to vitrify anything more complex than moss, listing what must have been a frustrating succession of failures to vitrify cell
suspensions, as well as plant and animal tissues, including leaves and muscle fibres. In contrast, in their chapter in this volume, Taylor et al. report success in vitrifying complex tissues, if not yet organs, including corneas, blood vessels, and articular cartilage.
