50 Years Ago

The First Anthocyanins appearing during the Ripening of Blueberries

We decided to investigate the blueberry, Vaccinium myrtillus L. ... It is known that the ripe blueberry contains at least seven anthocyanins ... Collecting the pigment from raw, reddish berries in sufficient amounts for identification was found to be too laborious a task. The pigments separated from raw berries were therefore compared with pigment fractions from ripe blueberries ... The two anthocyanins initially appearing during the maturation process of blueberries are both found to be cyanidin derivatives.

From Nature 29 July 1961

100 Years Ago

The Law of Sex Determination and its Practical Application. By Laura A. Calhoun (Mrs. E. E. Calhoun). pg. 254. (New York: The Eugenics Publishing Co., 1910)

The theory suggested in this book is that “the sex of the embryo in man and the higher animals is determined in the ovary from which the ovum in question is developed.” We shall not give away the ingenuous author's practical recipe, but the general theory is that the right ovary is responsible for the males. This will be good news for those who believe that men are always in the right. ... The experiments ... reported in the Journal of Genetics, November, 1910, show that “in the rat it is not true that ova determining one sex are produced from one ovary, and those determining the opposite sex from the other, for each rat, with one ovary completely removed, produced young of both sexes.” ... It is a well-intentioned book, but it does not contribute much to the difficult problem discussed.

From Nature 27 July 1911