The Origin of Genetics: A Mendel Source Book PDF
Preview The Origin of Genetics: A Mendel Source Book
ie. Edited by CURT STERN-and EVA R. SHERWOOD The Oh atest rf( One A Mendel Source Book The Origin of Genetics A Mendel Source Book Medal designed by V. A- Kovanié for the Mendel Memorial Celebration of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences, 1965. The Origin of Genetics A Mendel Source Book Edited by CURT STERN and EVA R. SHERWOOD University of Califorma, Berkeley W. H. FREEMAN AND COMPANY San Francisco Copyright © 1966 by W. H. Freeman and Company. The publisher reserves all rights to reproduce this book, in whole or in part, with the exception of the right to use short quotations for review of the book. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Catalog Card-Number 66-27948 ISBN: 0-7167-0655-5 2S as Dy 39) Foreword Gregor Mendel’s short treatise “Experiments on Plant Hy- brids” is one of the triumphs of the human mind. It does not simply announce the discovery of important facts by new methods of observation and experiment. Rather, in an act of highest creativity, it presents these facts in a conceptual scheme which gives them general meaning. Mendel’s paper is not solely a historical document. It remains alive as a su- preme example of scientific experimentation and profound penetration of data. It can give pleasure and provide insight to each new reader—and strengthen the exhilaration of being in the company of a great mind at every subsequent study. Mendel’s triumph was a lonely one. Neither his fellow members in the Briinn Natural History Society, nor the read- ers of its Proceedings or of his reprints were able to under- stand the significance of his achievement. Not even Carl Nageli, the famous botanist with whom Mendel corresponded over a period of seven years, grasped the meaning of Mendel’s work. Mendel himself, who had followed his experiments with peas by additional ones on hybridization in the genus Hieracium, obtained results which did not fit the insight gained by him earlier. Judged by its lack of influence on his contemporaries, his labor and thought seemed a failure. Then, years after his death, the development of biology led to the rediscovery of his findings and interpretations. The failure which had followed his hidden triumph was in tum succeeded by open and lasting vindication. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant has writ- ten as follows: “Observation and analysis of phenomena penetrate into the depths of Nature, and one cannot know how far this will lead in the course of time.” The observa- tions and their analysis which Mendel supplied have indeed led far. Without a break in intellectual continuity they be- came the Mendelism of the early years of this century, joined with the study of chromosomes to expand into the cytogenetics of the next decades, took on new meaning when the biochemical and developmental activities of Mendel’s “cell elements” came into the foreground of investigations, and remain conceptually one of the bases of the most ad- vanced contemporary molecular genetics. Mendel’s paper of 1866 can be read as a self-contained document illustrating the power of the human intellect to probe into the depths of Nature and it can be read as a prelude to a hundred years of further penetration. The two genetic papers of Mendel have been available in English translations since 1901 and 1902 respectively. In 1950, on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of Genetics, English translations of Mendel’s letters to Nageli, as well as of reports of 1900 in which de Vries, Correns, and Tschermak first announced their rediscovery of Mendel’s publications on Pisum were also published in a supplement to the journal Genetics. Now, at the centenary of the experiments on plant hybridization, it seems appropriate to bring together in a single volume the most relevant documents of the period of success, eclipse, and ultimate triumph of Mendelism. Section I of our collection consists of Mendel’s two papers on hybridization and of his letters to Nageli. In 1965 Pro- fessor L. C. Dunn of Columbia University wrote me that Dr. Alan Robertson of the Institute of Animal Genetics, Uni- versity of Edinburgh, had called his attention to some pos- sible inaccuracies in the original translation of Mendel’s main vl Foreword paper commissioned by the Royal Horticultural Society (1901). Professor Dunn checked on some passages and agreed that in at least one instance the translation was in- accurate. In providing an English translation for the present collection of documents, we at first intended to use the trans- lation of 1901 corrected for a few errors. However, a careful comparison with the original German text showed not only a number of mistakes which fundamentally changed the mean- ing of Mendel’s sentences but in addition so many other inaccuracies that Eva Sherwood undertook a completely new translation. An English translation of Mendel’s second paper “On Hieracium Hybrids Obtained by Artificial Fertilisation” (1870) was first made available by Bateson (1902). Here, too, a number of errors (as distinguished from inaccurate shades of rendition) were found. In this case, the original translation has been accepted for printing in the present vol- ume after appropriate correction. In Mendel’s letters to Nageli he defends his work in ob- jective fashion against Nageli’s speaking of it “with mis- trustful caution” (18 April, 1867). He writes that he himself would not have done “otherwise in a similar case” (18 Apmil, 1867). He describes important unpublished new results of genetic significance, among them the proof that a single pollen grain suffices to fertilize an ovule. He also reports to Nageli on his many crosses between Hieracium species, some of which formed the content of his second genetic paper. It is well known that the choice of this genus as a subject for Mendel’s work was unfortunate. He could not know—as was shown only many years later—that Hieracium is frequently parthenogenetic or apogamous, a situation which obviously results in offspring to which the supposed pollinating parent has not made any genetic contribution. Mendel’s two papers did not sink completely into oblivion. In 1881 the German botanist Focke published a book en- titled Die Pflanzen-Mischlinge. The bulk of the material was a systematic listing of all the better known plant hybrids. Foreword vii Under “Pisum” and under “Phaseolus” Focke cites Mendel’s paper of 1866. Similarly, the word “Hieracium” in the index leads to a reference to Mendel’s 1870 paper. Focke’s specific accounts of the work were all too brief. Moreover, his chapter on the history of hybridization, the last section of which is given to the period from 1851 until “the present” (approximately 1879), is mainly devoted to the work of hybridizers other than Mendel. He refers at length to Naudin and Godron, the two competitors for the 1862 Prize of the French Academy of Sciences on hybridiza- tion in the plant kingdom, whose papers were published in the following year. He discusses Wichura’s willow hybridiza- tions (1865) and Nageli’s more general treatments of plant hybrids (1865, 1866). In this chapter the only reference to Mendel is contained in a sentence on p. 444: “Among the most recent scientific experiments on hybridization those of Rob. Caspary with Nymphaeaceaz, of G. Mendel with Phaseolus and Hieracium, of D. A. Godron with Datura, Aegilops and Triticum and Papaver deserve to be called espe- cially instructive.” The Pisum work is not mentioned here. All of Focke’s references to Mendel, translated into English, are presented as our very short Section II. The simultaneous and independent rediscovery of Men- delism by two investigators, de Vries and Correns, added drama to its long neglect. The communications in which these men announced their findings make up Section III. Actually, de Vries had within a very brief period written three papers which appeared in three different journals. The shortest of these papers, one of two written in French, ap- peared first in print, but it seems clear that a paper in Ger- man was written before the others. It is the German paper that has been translated into English for the present volume. There is no mention of Mendel in de Vries’ French note, but his German report refers to Mendel explicitly. Correns was even more emphatic in his recognition of Mendel, as shown by the title of his article: “G. Mendel’s Law Con- cerning the Behavior of Progeny of Varietal Hybrids.” vill Foreword
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