She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity by Carl Zimmer
Authors: Carl Zimmer
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Vries’s first visit, Burbank got a letter from the Carnegie Institution. Andrew Carnegie had set up the institution two years earlier to fund important scientific research. Carnegie himself believed that some of the money should go to Burbank, whom he called a genius. The letter informed Burbank he would shortly receive $10,000 “for the purpose of furtheringyour experimental investigations in the evolution of plants.” The institution would send him another $10,000 the next year, and the year after that, with no clear end in mind.
The popular press released a fresh flurry of profiles of Burbank, pointing to the Carnegie cash as science’s seal of approval. In 1906, a botanist named George Shull arrived to help Burbank write up scientific reports about his research.
Shull found Burbank to be an artist of nature. As a scientist, however, he was a phantom. When Shull asked Burbank for experimental records, theold horticulturalist might hand him a few sheets of paper on which he had scribbled notes in pencil. “This was a rich, sweet, delicious, superb pear, as good as Bartlett, perhaps much better,” he wrote on one sheet. He sliced one of the pears in half and stamped it on the page, letting the juice stain the paper.
Shull tried instead to talk to Burbank to extract useful information. Burbank informed him that he was the greatest authority of plant life that ever lived. He claimed to have already discovered Mendel’s results on his own, and yet he also declared that acquired characters could be transmitted from one generation to the next. “Environment is the architect of heredity,” Burbank said.
When Shull pressed him for the concrete details of his work, Burbank grew so irritated he started avoiding Shull around the gardens. It wasn’t Shull’s line of questioning that annoyed him so much as the fact thatthe young botanist seemed to be preparing to explode his legend. Indeed, Shull reported back to the Carnegie Institution that it would be impossible to use any of the plants to test Mendel’s theory of inheritance. In 1910, the Carnegie Institution sent Burbank their last check. Their $60,000 bought them a single report from Shull, about rhubarb.
As the Carnegie money dried up, a swarm of businessmen descended on Burbank, proposing deals to make him staggeringly rich. Some of the hucksters set about publishing a lavish, costly encyclopedia of his life’s work. That venture collapsed into bankruptcy in 1916. Other businessmen set up the Luther Burbank Company, to sell his plants directly to customers rather than to nurseries. They mismanaged the venture, unable to align their supply to demand. Things got so desperate that the company started shipping ordinary cacti in place of Burbank’s spineless variety. Before putting the plants in the mail, company workers simply scrubbed off the spines with a wire brush. The Luther Burbank Company went bankrupt as well.
Burbank managed to hold on to much of his wealth despite these disasters. But they permanently tarnished his reputation. By the 1920s, Burbank had become an untrustworthy businessman whom scientists no longerrevered. He spent his final years puttering around his Santa Rosa farm, cared for by his young second wife, Elizabeth, along with a few assistants. In 1926, Burbank died at age seventy-seven. Thousands of people came to his funeral at a nearby park, and then his body was brought back to his house, where it was buried. Nothing stood over his grave except a cedar of Lebanon. “I would like to think of my strength going into the strength of a tree,” he once said. Elizabeth sold off his remaining plants to Stark Bro’s, just as Hiatt had sold his Delicious apples three decades before. Burbank’s garden tools went to Henry Ford.
After his death, Burbank enjoyed a longer stretch of fame than de Vries had. His face reappeared in popular culture for decades. As late as 1948, the beer company Anheuser-Busch was using his likeness in their ads. In a
The popular press released a fresh flurry of profiles of Burbank, pointing to the Carnegie cash as science’s seal of approval. In 1906, a botanist named George Shull arrived to help Burbank write up scientific reports about his research.
Shull found Burbank to be an artist of nature. As a scientist, however, he was a phantom. When Shull asked Burbank for experimental records, theold horticulturalist might hand him a few sheets of paper on which he had scribbled notes in pencil. “This was a rich, sweet, delicious, superb pear, as good as Bartlett, perhaps much better,” he wrote on one sheet. He sliced one of the pears in half and stamped it on the page, letting the juice stain the paper.
Shull tried instead to talk to Burbank to extract useful information. Burbank informed him that he was the greatest authority of plant life that ever lived. He claimed to have already discovered Mendel’s results on his own, and yet he also declared that acquired characters could be transmitted from one generation to the next. “Environment is the architect of heredity,” Burbank said.
When Shull pressed him for the concrete details of his work, Burbank grew so irritated he started avoiding Shull around the gardens. It wasn’t Shull’s line of questioning that annoyed him so much as the fact thatthe young botanist seemed to be preparing to explode his legend. Indeed, Shull reported back to the Carnegie Institution that it would be impossible to use any of the plants to test Mendel’s theory of inheritance. In 1910, the Carnegie Institution sent Burbank their last check. Their $60,000 bought them a single report from Shull, about rhubarb.
As the Carnegie money dried up, a swarm of businessmen descended on Burbank, proposing deals to make him staggeringly rich. Some of the hucksters set about publishing a lavish, costly encyclopedia of his life’s work. That venture collapsed into bankruptcy in 1916. Other businessmen set up the Luther Burbank Company, to sell his plants directly to customers rather than to nurseries. They mismanaged the venture, unable to align their supply to demand. Things got so desperate that the company started shipping ordinary cacti in place of Burbank’s spineless variety. Before putting the plants in the mail, company workers simply scrubbed off the spines with a wire brush. The Luther Burbank Company went bankrupt as well.
Burbank managed to hold on to much of his wealth despite these disasters. But they permanently tarnished his reputation. By the 1920s, Burbank had become an untrustworthy businessman whom scientists no longerrevered. He spent his final years puttering around his Santa Rosa farm, cared for by his young second wife, Elizabeth, along with a few assistants. In 1926, Burbank died at age seventy-seven. Thousands of people came to his funeral at a nearby park, and then his body was brought back to his house, where it was buried. Nothing stood over his grave except a cedar of Lebanon. “I would like to think of my strength going into the strength of a tree,” he once said. Elizabeth sold off his remaining plants to Stark Bro’s, just as Hiatt had sold his Delicious apples three decades before. Burbank’s garden tools went to Henry Ford.
After his death, Burbank enjoyed a longer stretch of fame than de Vries had. His face reappeared in popular culture for decades. As late as 1948, the beer company Anheuser-Busch was using his likeness in their ads. In a
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