The Recombinant University by Doogab Yi is a fine history of what Paul Berg, one of the book's chief human protagonists, described as a transformation of academic life sciences from a culture of ‘publish or perish’ to that of ‘patent and profit’ (p. 1). The title, which uses a phrase that was coined by Berg himself, is a particularly apt one for this project, because embedded within are layers of meaning, all of which are appropriate for this particular story. At one level it is an apt enough label for a book on the history of a university, or rather a department – the biochemistry department of the Stanford University Medical School, of which Berg was a founding member – that harnessed the techniques of recombinant DNA technology and effected the transformation described by Berg. But there is a deeper story here, for the transformation of the academic culture was itself a recombination, a formation of a hybrid – recombinant – institution which ‘spliced’ together the university with the biotechnology industry during the 1960s and 1970s (p. 2). In this book Yi takes us through six chapters, gradually widening in scope from a single department to the entire San Francisco Bay Area, to show us the nuts and bolts of this recombination. His choice is most appropriate, for the Bay Area was the site of perhaps the first, and certainly the largest, such change, but it became the template and representative for similar transformations in different parts of the United States.

The Recombinant University is a very meticulously researched piece of scholarship and there is no way that I can do justice to its content and scope in the limited space allotted for this review. So I will make just a few remarks about what makes it such a valuable contribution to contemporary scholarship. For the historians of science who align themselves with different camps, such as the internalists, the institutional, the biographical, etc. (I often plead guilty to this crime), this book works as an excellent example of how different approaches might be successfully integrated. Yi skilfully weaves together a narrative that shows us the broader trends and actions of entire institutions and the biotechnology industry of the Bay Area, and wandering beyond science into cultural and economic history, while keeping in sight the individual contributions of various scientists.

The first chapter looks at the department that is the case study for the transformations that Yi has chosen to examine. It begins in 1959 when Stanford Medical School imported, virtually wholesale, an entire laboratory of biochemists (Berg among them) from Washington University in St Louis, headed by the soon-to-be Nobel laureate Arthur Kornberg, to form the faculty of their new biochemistry department. The constitution of the department was an artefact of Kornberg, as new chairman, having been given carte blanche to hand-pick the members of his new department. What came into shape as a result of his choices was what Yi characterizes as a ‘communal form of laboratory life’, that grew from a common interest in DNA, already in place in St Louis (p. 30). In the second chapter he tracks the scientific (but not geographic) migration of many of the department's members, beginning with Berg and David Hogness in the late 1960s, to studying the molecular biology of eukaryotes. Here too Yi has done a creditable job of balancing individual stories and broader societal contexts: showing how the interests of these scientists resonated with, even responded to, a shift in a call, brought about by the increasing involvement of politicians and social activists in influencing funding decisions, to making research medically relevant. Chapter 3 takes us into the 1970s, when recombinant DNA research technology fully blossomed and became a nodal point for a new ‘system of exchange’ among various scientists (p. 83). Here and in the succeeding chapters Yi challenges the conventional narrative about the rise of genetic engineering, and rather than focus on the oft-touted success story with DNA as hero, takes us through failed experiments, the financial and political ups and downs that played important roles in shaping both academic and commercial biotechnology. The highly influential Asilomar conferences of 1973 and 1975, whereby biologists imposed limitations on what they could and could not do on their own, are visited in great detail, and controversies over issues of patenting different genes are also brought to light in the later chapters. In his illuminating final chapter Yi uses Stanford's biotechnology company DNAX as a case history on the nature of the relationship between universities and the burgeoning biotechnology industry, which to this day is a significant presence in the Bay Area's commercial landscape.

If I had to voice a complaint about this book, it is that it makes you work too hard at reading it. Repeated references to the ‘moral and political economies' of science, which pop up throughout the book, feel somewhat heavy, even forced, at times. Some of the book's best moments are unfortunately hidden in the epigraphs to the chapters – there is even one by the pop artist Andy Warhol (p. 172). Perhaps Yi could have woven such comments into his main narrative to lighten it up. Nothing about The Recombinant University is lightweight, however, and I couldn't help but feel that the content could have gained from a leavening of livelier prose. But my grouse is half-hearted at best, because the rewards for perseverance are immense. Ultimately this book is a fine piece of scholarship and whether you are a seasoned scholar or a student, you will find much in it that is very valuable.