BROOKES, Martin 1967-

PERSONAL: Born 1967. Education: Holds a Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Agent—c/o Author Mail, Bloomsbury Publishing, 175 5th Ave., Ste. 300, New York, NY 10010.

CAREER: University College London, London, England, biological researcher at Galton Laboratory.

WRITINGS:

Genetics, Time-Life Books (Alexandria, VA), 1998.

Fly: The Unsung Hero of Twentieth-Century Science, Ecco Press (New York, NY), 2001.

Extreme Measures: The Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galton, Bloomsbury (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to New Scientist, BBC Wildlife magazine, and London Guardian.

SIDELIGHTS: Science writer Martin Brookes is the author of the nonfiction work Fly: The Unsung Hero of Twentieth-Century Science as well as the biography Extreme Measures: The Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galton. Brookes, an evolutionary biologist who spent several years as a researcher in the Galton Laboratory at University College London, has also contributed articles to such publications as New Scientist and BBC Wildlife.

In Fly Brookes examines the impact of the fruit fly on genetic research, focusing on the work of scientist Thomas Hunt Morgan and his group of students at Columbia University. While others experimented with frogs, mice, and earthworms, "Morgan realized the lowly fruit fly offered his team a chance to study evolution in fast-forward mode," noted Smithsonian contributor Jim Morrison. "Fruit flies did what other animals did, only faster and cheaper. Birth, sex, and death occurred within a couple of wild and woolly weeks." Morgan bred millions of the insects in the "Fly Room" at Schermerhorn Hall, where he helped lay the groundwork for modern genetic studies. Brookes also describes the experiments of Nobel Prizewinning scientist Hermann Muller, who studied mutations in fly chromosomes caused by exposure to X-rays, and Theodosius Dobzhansky, whose work in genetic diversity strengthened the link between genetics and evolution. According to a critic in Kirkus Reviews, the author "gives enough detail of the various experiments to give the layperson a grasp of their significance, and provides an entertaining glimpse of the daily workings of a genetics lab." "Brookes writes with humor and economy," remarked a contributor to Publishers Weekly. "He places the unsung fruit fly into the much broader and immediate history of the rapidly advancing fields of biology and genetics."

Extreme Measures concerns eccentric, controversial Victorian innovator Francis Galton, a statistical wizard who explored the African continent, invented the modern weather map, and pioneered the use of fingerprinting to solve crimes. Galton is also regarded as the father of eugenics, the science of improving the human race through selective breeding that took its most appalling form in Nazi Germany, where almost 400,000 people were forcibly sterilized. "Brookes is clearly impressed by the exuberance of Galton's curiosity and the range of his achievement," wrote New Yorker critic Jim Holt. "Still, he cannot help finding Galton a little dotty, a man gripped by an obsession with counting and measuring that made him 'one of the Victorian era's chief exponents of the scientific folly.' If Brookes is right, Galton was led astray not merely by Victorian prejudice but by a failure to understand the very statistical ideas that he had conceived." In Extreme Measures "Brookes explores the mind of this polymath, illuminating how one man could both innovate modern genetics' most useful tools and completely misinterpret the results," observed a critic in Publishers Weekly.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2001, review of Fly: The Unsung Hero of Twentieth-Century Science, p. 1180; August 15, 2004, review of Extreme Measures: The Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galton, p. 784.

New Yorker, January 24, 2005, Jim Holt, "Measure for Measure," review of Extreme Measures, p. 84.

Publishers Weekly, September 10, 2001, review of Fly, p. 83; August 2, 2004, review of Extreme Measures, p. 58.

Smithsonian, October, 2001, Jim Morrison, review of Fly, p. 134.

Spectator, March 31, 2001, Nicholas Harman, review of Fly, p. 48.