Origins of Modern Genetics ► Jean Baptiste Lamarck (French, early 19 th c.): “The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics” ► Charles Darwin (English, 1859): Species can change through the process of natural selection ► Gregor Mendel (Austrian, 1865): Founder of modern genetics; Experimental discovery of inheritance of traits from one generation to the next; genes as material foundation of heredity
Jean B. Lamarck ( )
Charles Darwin ( )
Gregor Mendel ( )
Modern Genetics ► Thomas Morgan ( ): Located genes at chromosomes and developed modern genetics through experiments on Drosophila—fruit flies ► Oswald Avery ( ) and colleagues: Discovered in 1944 that DNA was the molecule that contained genetic information
Thomas Morgan ( )
Oswald Avery ( )
Watson and Crick ► James Watson (1928-) and Francis Crick ( ): “Cracked” the molecular structure of DNA and explained how the genetic codes were transferred from one generation to another. ► Maurice Wilkins ( ) and Rosalind Franklin ( ): made the crucial contributions to Watson and Crick with their crystallography of DNA
James Watson
Francis Crick
Rosalind Franklin
Maurice Wilkins
Issues to Consider ► Modern science as interdisciplinary ► Biology and physics ► Importance of being at a center of scientific communication ► Styles of scientific research ► Gender and science