1900: Rediscovery of Mendel's Work

1900: Rediscovery of Mendel's Work

DeVries, Correns and Tschermak independently rediscover Mendel's work. Three botanists - Hugo DeVries, Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak - independently rediscovered Mendel's work in the same year, a generation after Mendel published his papers. They helped expand awareness of the Mendelian laws of inheritance in the scientific world.

The three Europeans, unknown to each other, were working on different plant hybrids when they each worked out the laws of inheritance. When they reviewed the literature before publishing their own results, they were startled to find Mendel's old papers spelling out those laws in detail. Each man announced Mendel's discoveries and his own work as confirmation of them.

By 1900, cells and chromosomes were sufficiently understood to give Mendel's abstract ideas a physical context.

More Information

Reference:

Roberts, H. F. Plant Hybridization before Mendel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1929.

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