Molecular biology and Pauling's immunochemistry: a neglected dimension

This paper argues that there is a substantial overlap between the history of immunology and the history of molecular biology, an overlap manifested in the researches on antibodies during the 1930s and 1940s. This common ground is a product of intellectual developments, as well as institutional trends. Viewed from an intellectual vantage point of the 1930s and 1940s, molecular biology was essentially the study of the biological specificities of the so-called 'giant protein molecules'. Within the conceptual framework of early molecular biology, which was rooted in the protein view of life, the concepts of protein template, autocatalysis, and heterocatalysis were central in explaining the protein syntheses of genes, viruses, enzymes, hormones, and antibodies. Immunochemistry and serological genetics were at the heart of that research agenda. This paper also shows that the immunochemistry program of Linus Pauling, which focused on molecular mechanisms of antibody structure and function, and the projects in serological genetics at Caltech's biology division were supported by the Rockefeller Foundation under the aegis of its molecular biology program. Based on the close examination of intellectual and institutional factors, the histories of molecular biology and immunology in the pre-DNA era are seen as closely linked.