The chemical basis of morphogenesis, pp. 37-72. Offprint from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Vol. 237, No. 641, 14 August, 1952. TURING AND THE SECRET OF LIFE

TURING, Alan

Published by Published for the Royal Society by the Cambridge University Press, 1952

First edition, the extremely rare separate printing, of Turing's last major published work, which was "in every respect ahead of its time" (Copeland, The Essential Turing, p. 510). Taking his cue from the zoologist D'Arcy Thompson, who held that the forms of living things are to be explained in terms of the operation of physical forces and mathematical laws, Turing presents here the first mathematical theory of embryology. "At a time when Crick and Watson were using X-ray diffraction to establish the structure of DNA, Turing was grappling with a theoretical understanding of how information might be spread and diffused at a chemical level. In a classic statement of the scientific method Turing wrote: 'a mathematical model of the growing embryo will be described. This model will be a simplification and an idealisation, and consequently a falsification. It is to be hoped that the features retained for discussion are those of greatest importance in the present state of knowledge'. The result was applied mathematics par excellence. Just as the simple idea of the Turing machine had sent him into fields beyond the boundaries of Cambridge mathematics, so now this simple idea in physical chemistry took him into a region of new mathematical problems" (Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma, p. 434). "Alan Turing's paper, 'The chemical basis of morphogenesis,' has been hugely influential in a number of areas. In this paper, Turing proposed that biological pattern formation arises in response to a chemical pre-pattern which, in turn, is set up by a process now known as diffusion-driven instability. The genius of this work was that he considered a system which was stable in the absence of diffusion and then showed that the addition of diffusion, which is naturally stabilising, actually caused an instability. Thus, it was the integration of the parts that was as crucial to the understanding of embryological development as the parts themselves - patterns emerged or self-organised as a result of the individual parts interacting. To see how far ahead of his time he was, one has to note that it is only now in the post-genomic era of systems biology that the majority of the scientific community has arrived at the conclusion he came to 60 years ago . . . Applications of Turing's work to developmental biology are too numerous to list but include limb development, pigmentation patterning, hair and feather germ formation, tooth morphogenesis, phyllotaxis, hydra patterning and regeneration. Moreover, ideas of self-organization now abound in biology, chemistry and ecology. The stimulus for a lot of this work stems from Turing's original ideas . . . Although still very controversial, Turing's theory for morphogenesis provided a paradigm shift in our way of thinking' (Maini, in Alan Turing: his work and impact, p. 684). There are two separate issues of 'The chemical basis of morphogenesis' which differ only in the presence (as here) or absence of a price (eight shillings) at the foot of the front wrapper and on the signature line of the first leaf of text. RBH records the sale of only one copy of this printing, and four copies of the issue without the price. No copies of either issue are listed on Library Hub, although there is a copy of the un-priced issue at Bletchley Park. 4to (300 x 235mm), pp. 37-72. Original printed wrappers. Seller Inventory # ABE-1752939369858

Bibliographic Details

Title: The chemical basis of morphogenesis, pp. 37-...
Publisher: Published for the Royal Society by the Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: 1952
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: Fine
Edition: 1st Edition