The Genetic Effects of Radiation

By ISAAC ASIMOV and THEODOSIUS DOBZHANSKY
The cover design embodies a radiation symbol, a stylized karyotype of human chromosomes, and a genealogical table.
ISAAC ASIMOV received his academic degrees from Columbia University and is Associate Professor of Biochemistry at the Boston University School of Medicine. He is a prolific author who has written over 65 books in the past 15 years, including about 20 science fiction works, and books for children. His many excellent science books for the public cover subjects in mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology, such as The Genetic Code , Inside the Atom , Building Blocks of the Universe , The Living River , The New Intelligent Man’s Guide to Science , and Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology . In 1965 Dr. Asimov received the James T. Grady Award of the American Chemical Society for his major contribution in reporting science progress to the public.
THEODOSIUS DOBZHANSKY was graduated from Kiev University and is now a professor at the Rockefeller University. He has done research in genetics and biological evolution on every continent except Antarctica. Among his distinguished published works are Radiation, Genes, and Man , Heredity and the Nature of Man , Mankind Evolving , and Evolution, Genetics, and Man . Mr. Dobzhansky received the Daniel G. Elliot Prize and Medal and the Kimber Genetics Award from the National Academy of Sciences in 1958, and the National Medal of Science awarded by the President of the United States, in 1965.
There is nothing new under the sun, says the Bible. Nor is the sun itself new, we might add. As long as life has existed on earth, it has been exposed to radiation from the sun, so that life and radiation are old acquaintances and have learned to live together.
We are accustomed to looking upon sunlight as something good, useful, and desirable, and certainly we could not live long without it. The energy of sunlight warms the earth, produces the winds that tend to equalize earth’s temperatures, evaporates the oceans and produces rain and fresh water. Most important of all, it supplies what is needed for green plants to convert carbon dioxide and water into food and oxygen, making it possible for all animal life (including ourselves) to live.