The influence of chemistry in biochemistry may seem as amorphous and boundless a theme as the influence of theology in the church. At the beginning, nearly a third of the members of the American Society of Biological Chemists had Ph.D. degrees in chemistry. Half of ASBC members who got their degrees between 1900 and 1910 joined the American Chemical Society; no fewer than 85% of the cohort with doctorates between 1930 and 1934 did so. It is rare to find biochemists who did not take their undergraduate work in chemistry. Most chemists regarded biochemistry as an applied branch of their discipline, and their views enjoyed increasing deference from biochemists. How, then, to dissect such a close-woven tissue of relationships? As in the preceding chapter, we must concentrate on institutionalized roles and channels of influence. We must see what systematic opportunities there were for recruitment of chemists or for cooperative relations. We must see how adoption of chemists' theories and methods conferred strategic advantages for discipline building. We must understand how chemists' disciplinary ambitions and their role in medical school departments shaped the practice of biochemistry.

The language of “hybrid” disciplines should not mislead us into assuming that chemistry and biology or medicine had equal or symmetrical roles in the genesis and nurture of biochemistry. In fact, they did not. Biology and medicine provided problems; chemistry provided means. (Chemical means did tend, of course, to become biochemical ends.) Few biochemists came from backgrounds in biology or the biomedical sciences; chemistry was the principal source of recruits.