Müller's Lab

by Laura Otis

Many scientific structures and systems are named after Johannes Müller, one of the most respected anatomists and physiologists of the 19th century. Müller was a mentor to many scientists of his age, many of whom would go on to make trail-blazing discoveries of their own. Among them were Theodor Schwann, who demonstrated that all animals are made of cells; Hermann Helmholtz, who measured the velocity of nerve impulses; and Rudolf Virchow, who convinced doctors to think of disease at the cellular level. This book tells Müller's story by interweaving it with that of seven of his most famous students. Müller suffered from depression and insomnia at the same time as he was donig his most important scientific work, and may have committed suicide at age 53. Like Müller, his most prominent students faced personal and social challenges as they practiced cutting-edge science. Virchow was fired for his political activism, Jakob Henle was jailed for membership in a dueling society, and Robert Remak was barred from Prussian universities for refusing to renounce his Orthodox Judaism. By recounting these stories, Müller's Lab explores the ways in which personal life can affect scientists' professional choices, and consequently affect the great discoveries they make

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Trained as a neuroscientist and literary scholar, Laura Otis, Ph.D., studies the ways that literature and science intersect. In her interdisciplinary research, she compares scientific and literary writers' descriptions of memory, identity, emotion, and thought. Her research has been supported by MacArthur, Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Humboldt Fellowships. Otis earned her BS in Biochemistry at Yale University, her MA in Neuroscience from the University of California at San Francisco, her PhD in Comparative Literature from Cornell University, and her MFA in Fiction from Warren Wilson College. Since 2004 she has been a Professor of English at Emory University, where she teaches interdisciplinary courses on literature, neuroscience, cognitive science, and medicine. Otis is the author of Organic Memory (1994), Membranes (1999), Networking (2001), Müller’s Lab (2007), Rethinking Thought (2016), and Banned Emotions (2019). She has also translated neurobiologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s Vacation Stories (2001) into English and has edited Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology (2002). A fiction-writer as well as a scholar, she is the author of the novels Clean, Refiner’s Fire, Lacking in Substance, The Tantalus Letters, and The Memory Hive. Her current project, The Neuroscience of Craft, examines what neuroscientists and creative writers can learn from each other about how sensations blend in people’s minds.

Reviews

[Konstantin Ivanovitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

We all desire to encounter good teachers in our lives. But what exactly makes one good? Laura Otis, in Mueller’s Lab, shows that these needs are different for everyone, and have been for some time. This book explores the relationships that seven great scientists each had with their shared mentor, Johannes Mueller, in the first half of the 19th century. Through her study of their written word, Otis paints vivid pictures of the personal development of each of these men. Each of Mueller’s students made massive contributions to physiology. Yet this book does not emphasize these aspects of their stories as much as it intends to explore the various ways each of them embraced or eschewed the influence of their mentor.

I believe anyone involved in research should know the origin stories of their areas of study. I originally picked up this book to obtain a clearer understanding of the lay of the land of physiology’s origin story. The names Virchow, Schwann, Helmholz, Du Bois-Reymond, Remack, Haeckle, and Heinle were vaguely familiar to me, but I knew very little about what they accomplished, when and where they lived, and generally who they were. This book has served as a wonderful orientation for this period in the history of science. Getting our bearings around this story in particular is not too hard: Turns out, they all were part of the same social and professional network in Germany and all were a part of what made German science the 19th century powerhouse it was.

As the title of this book suggests, there were two common threads that united these men. First, they all contributed to the massive scientific revolutions that changed various fields of biology. Otis sets the political, cultural, economic, and scientific contexts for these developments incredibly well and this is the stand-out achievement of this book. She explains how and why German-speaking countries created a network of competitive universities to train its elite and expand its technology. She conveyed how universities operated at that time and the conditions that students lived and worked under. We also learn the ways that students at the time obtained their money (from their parents apparently) and what their classes were like. I highly recommend this book to get a sense for the cultural background of these individuals. I also really appreciated the rich emphasis Otis places on the socioeconomic backgrounds of each scientist and how that determined their path to their discoveries.

Otis is a scientist by training but is more concerned with the personal backgrounds and environments of these men than the details about the science. It is enough, however, to orient one’s self with what general areas they worked in, and I think the reader will feel equipped to go and explore the histories of each person in more depth.

The second thread woven throughout the book is their common mentor, Mueller. We do not see very often today labs that produce this much talent, and if the Nobel Prize was around at that time, this lab would have produced many recipients. Otis wrote this book to try to understand what was so special about Mueller, and she also wants to explore how each scientist’s background and personality interacted with his teacher. I am not sure we really learn much about the former question. While Mueller established his career on experimental physiology, he later became only interested in his museum collection. His students seemed to simply use the atmosphere and prestige to bolster their confidence as they started using the new microscope and electronics technologies that were emerging at the time.

Otis’s book attempts – and very admirably accomplishes – to get inside the heads of Mueller’s students as they make their discoveries under Mueller. But Otis specifically describes the dynamics that each student had with their mentor and tries to frame their scientific discoveries in the context of the very tensions, frustrations, joys, and breakthroughs that each had in their relationship with Mueller. I’ll admit that at points found myself skipping whole sections that were devoted to describing these interactions. At times it felt like it was trying to squeeze juice from a rock. I will admit that the layers of respect, resentment, and rebellion that permeate some of the student’s experiences of their teacher (ahem, du Bois-Reymond!) were quite interesting and allowed me to feel more connected to these young people that are usually seen as superhuman.

In all, this is a very esoteric and interesting book. Those looking for inspiration for their scientific work in physiology may find this very useful.