The Experimental Life of Naomi Mitchison
In 1915, three fledgling scientists—A.D. Sprunt and siblings J.B.S and Naomi Haldane—published a brief two-page paper in the Journal of Genetics. Just decades prior, European scientists had “rediscovered” Gregor Mendel’s theories on genetic inheritance, which were becoming increasingly popular in the Western scientific community. Multiple labs across Europe and the Americas raced to verify the rules and ratios that, according to Mendel, genetics obeyed.
At Columbia University, Thomas Hunt Morgan’s work with fruit flies gave credence to the idea of genetic linkage and the role of chromosomes in inheritance. Meanwhile, Sprunt and the Haldanes were trying to prove a similar connection in vertebrates by recording and analyzing the patterns of albinism in mice. But since some of their work was unfinished, their paper was only published as a “preliminary communication.” Before they could complete their intended research, Sprunt died in the First World War; J.B.S left to fight in the trenches in France; and Naomi began studying for her short-lived career as a nurse.
Naomi would go on to become a prolific writer, crafting works across several literary genres, including historical and speculative fiction. Today, she is mainly remembered as a writer, but over the course of her life, she often referred to herself as “partly scientist, partly historian, nothing complete.” She was not referring to a time where she held these titles professionally, but how she engaged and integrated ideas from science and history in her writing, politics, and personal life. Her vibrant and extensive literary portfolio was rooted in the same dedication to science and exploration displayed in the 1915 genetics paper. For Naomi, experimentation and exploration were ways of life.
“For Naomi, experimentation and exploration were ways of life.”
Naomi’s interest in genetics and the biological sciences stemmed from a natural curiosity in childhood. Naomi and her brother grew up helping their famous father, physiologist John Scott Haldane, in his lab, mostly with cleaning but occasionally with experiments. Despite his progressive politics, John Haldane treated his two children differently: While he was grooming his son to one day be a colleague, he made it clear to Naomi that the lab was not a space he expected her to occupy long-term. Naomi did not abide by her father’s ideas, and in 1914, she enrolled at the Society of Oxford Home Students (later named St Anne's College, Oxford) to pursue a degree in science. Fated to be short-lived, her education ended when hostilities broke out in Europe and she decided to drop out and take up nursing exams to contribute to the war effort.
At first glance, the short paper in the Journal of Genetics, published when Naomi was still a teenager, might appear to be an outlier in her story of literary merit. But it was so much more than that; as she drew upon her knowledge of biology and scientific experimentation, it became the foundation for her illustrious writing career.
In the world that emerged in England after the First World War, the rules that applied to women, especially upper-class white women like Naomi, became more malleable. Harnessing the privileges she was born into, she forged a unique life. In her biography of Naomi, Lesley Hall wrote that she lived “an experimental life,” testing out “new ways of living and being that were only just becoming available to women.”
Naomi, indeed, experimented in a great many things over the course of her life. And in a way, all her books were experiments of a kind. She began by writing historical fiction, using the genre to explore themes of her political present, such as the birth control and sexual freedom she writes about in the 1931 novel The Corn King and the Spring Queen. She later took up science fiction, choosing to speculate not just about the technological frontier but also to pose questions about morality and human nature. In her first science fiction book Memoirs of a Spacewoman, she wrote, “humiliation … was a necessary stage in exploration. The confident and the equable could never be the greatest explorers … One must be ready to be taken in, even if that meant being laughed at afterwards.”
The questions about Mendelian genetics that Naomi and her coauthors had tackled in the early 20th century were not so different from the ones she explored in her science fiction. Such themes were at the heart of many of her books, including the 1983 novel Not By Bread Alone, in which genetically-modified plants put an end to food scarcity, but, because this breakthrough takes place within modern capitalism, humanity is not ultimately liberated. Exploitation simply adapts and continues—no utopia is revealed and even a deep understanding of genetics is not enough to understand humanity.
“Naomi’s life was so rich and vast in scope, both personally and politically, that she defies easy categorization.”
Even her marriage was an experiment for her era. She married Dick Mitchison 1916 when she was still a teenager, and at first, the relationship was tinged with unease. Yet they soon came to a unique understanding of their needs and desires and began to see other lovers while raising children together and remaining stalwartly committed to each other. Biographer Jenni Calder notes that Naomi’s polyamorous marriage was unconventional, but successful. Her exploratory nature continued even later in life. For example, when she tried mescaline for the first time in her 60s, she approached it like an experiment—methodically and with the air of an academic.
Naomi’s life was so rich and vast in scope, both personally and politically, that she defies easy categorization. She occupied formal political office and marched on the streets for varied causes, including reproductive rights in London and tribal rights in Botswana. In more than 100 years of life, she wrote around 100 different pieces of literature, from journalistic explorations of Scottish agrarian life to historical and speculative novels that wrestled with different ways of being human.
That early piece of writing—the two page 1915 genetics paper—though it might seem inconsequential in the scope of her other works, showcases the influence science and an experimental approach to the unknown had on her vibrant, expansive literary life.
Further Reading
Jenni Calder, The Burning Glass: The Life of Naomi Mitchison (Sandstone Press, 2019).
Lesley A. Hall, Naomi Mitchinson: A Profile of Her Life and Work (Aqueduct Press, 2007).
