ABSTRACT
John Scott Haldane (JSH) trained his son with utmost care from a very early age to become a scientist, especially in physiology. JSH himself was an outstanding physiologist at New College, Oxford, who contributed much to the safety of miners and diving personnel. JSH involved his son from a very early age in legendary physiological experiments. Both father and son acted as their own “guinea pigs” in physiological experiments involving considerable risk and danger. Haldane was a polymath whose scientific work covered physiology, genetics, biochemistry, biometry, statistics, cosmology, and philosophy, among other disciplines. After serving in World War I, Haldane resumed his investigations of linkage, devising the first mapping function and suggesting the measure of chromosome map distance, centimorgan or cM, which was later adopted by molecular biologists. Haldane’s interest in evolution began with studies of natural selection, which Charles Darwin postulated as the main agent of evolutionary change.
