Mendel's legacy : the origin of classical genetics /

Classical genetics emerged in 1900 with the rediscovery of Mendelism and ended in 1953 with the publication of the double-helical structure of DNA. The story of how that happened is told in Mendel's Legacy: ;the Origin of Classical Genetics. the first work to explore the way in which the major principles of classical genetics emerged, this book traces the path from Mendel's profound discovery in 1865 in Europe, through the fields of breeding analysis, reproductive cell biology, cytology, and evolution, to their fusion in the early twentieth century to become the field of classical genetics. Mendel's Legacy also describes how the reductionist findings of classical genetics tied heredity to evolution and pointed the way to the "molecularization" of the gene. Elof Carlson's mentor, H.J. Muller, once described the process of working out what we now call classical genetics as the "winning of the facts". This phrase describes how much of science is done--the frustration, the false leads, the experimental results, and the competition that constitute the hallmarks of scientific progress. Carlson argues that the field of classical genetics evolved incrementally through experimentation and the introduction of new technology. Thus, with the perspective of approximately 50 years, this interpretative study gives the sense of how the science was actually done, how concepts developed, and why some failed and others succeeded. Carlson narrated his story by featuring the major and minor players as well as evaluating their seminal papers. In doing this, he explores the puzzle of why most of the early work was done by European scientists, but the tributaries leading up to classical genetics came together in the United States beginning with Sutton's chromosome theory of heredity in 1902. Issues such as the choice of the fruit fly and maize as primary organisms for study in the United States, the invention of the American graduate school, and changes in how research was done, as exem plified by the brilliant T.H. Morgan laboratory, are also discussed. Finally, the applications of classical genetics and their effects on society are highlighted. - Dust jacket.