Perspectives
Nature Reviews Genetics 7, 953-958 (December 2006) | doi:10.1038/nrg1948
Essay: Heredity before genetics: a history
Matthew Cobb1 About the author
Top of page
Abstract
Two hundred years ago, biologists did not recognize that there was such a thing as 'heredity'. By the 1830s, however, insights from medicine and agriculture had indicated that something is passed from generation to generation, creating the context for the brilliant advances of Mendel and Darwin. Recent work on the history and philosophy of science has shed light on how seventeenth-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thinkers sought to understand similarities between parents and offspring.
Author affiliations
-
Matthew Cobb is at the Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, M13 9PT, UK.
Email: cobb@manchester.ac.uk
