Fortunate Man

> We know a good deal more about iron

than about God.

> Men have fallen in love with statues

and pictures. I find it jar easier to imagine

a man falling in love with a differential

equation.

> I believe that the biologist is the most

romantic figure on earth.

>The people who interest me . . . are

not standardized people.

> I am a fortunate man.

These are a few of the very many very personal opinions of John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, extraordinary British biologist, prophet and philosopher. His scientific specialty is the application of mathematics to biology, a field in which he has won some renown. A bald, burly, tweedy, shaggy man, he admits he is dogmatic. His reputation for epigrammatic discourse is such that on his travels reporters swarm around him, work him for quotable gems.

Untrammeled by conventional mores, Mr. Haldane was named corespondent in a London divorce action in 1925. Cambridge University, at which he was then a reader in biochemistry, asked him to leave. Haldane refused. He went to the University of London in 1933, where he now occupies the chair of biometry--a life tenure.

Son of idealistic Scientist J. S. Haldane, nephew of the encyclopedic-minded Viscount Haldane who became Britain's Lord Chancellor, John B. S. Haldane was born 46 years ago in Scotland. Growing up in an atmosphere of intellectual curiosity and freedom, he did not find Einstein unintelligible or Freud shocking. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, served in France and Mesopotamia during the War, was twice wounded, became a captain. He said he enjoyed shooting Germans. Nowadays he is known as an authority on poison gas, is an Air Raid Precautions expert.

Last year, after, reading Marx, Engels and Lenin, Haldane became a Marxist. The natural result of this was a book. The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences. which Author Haldane published last fort night.* He believes, as does many another, that Marxism is the most scientific of all political philosophies, draws many a parallel between the evolution of society and the evolution of science.

Example: there was a time, in the his tory of mathematics, when certain kinds of irrational and imaginary numbers were not "respectable." The ancient Greeks were shocked and embarrassed by such a number as the square root of two. Now these numbers are indispensable tools of science -- just as political tenets which are not "respectable" today may be accepted as a matter of course tomorrow.

Some of these analogies are so much more obvious than brilliant that they will disappoint readers accustomed to the fire works of other Haldane writings. Whether or not a conversion to Marxism involves paralysis of the sense of humor, the au thor apparently decided that he could make the best impression with this book by assuming an air of grave reasonable ness. Despite this effort, many readers will find it less a proof of the scientific validity of Marxism than a collection of opinions on science and Marxism by John Burdon Sanderson Haldane.

* Random House ($2).

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