Talk:J. B. S. Haldane

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The widely reproduced quote about beetles might have been brought to general attention by Steven Jay Gould, who (according to a post on the STUMPERS-L list: 31 Jul 2003 by John Henderson) attributes it to Haldane speaking at a space flight conference in 1951; the lecture was not published but the quote was reproduced in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society vol. 10, p. 156. I haven't tracked down any of these citations myself. -- wiml

Unsourced[edit]

  • I've never met a healthy person who worried much about his health, or a good person who worried much about his soul.[1]

Is this right?[edit]

I might be missing something, but this Anecdote seems to be reported incorrectly:

  • At Oxford, the young Haldane was frequently asked whether he was related to the "famous John Scott Haldane", his father, and he would answer "That depends on whether you consider identity to be a relationship."

The joke, as I understand, is supposed to be that he is immodestly claiming that it is he who is the famous John Scott Haldane, rather than his father. But the "S" in his name stands for Sanderson, not Scott. So, I think there is a mistake here, perhaps because of how it has been transcribed and truncated.

Lucaswilkins (talk) 16:22, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]