Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2111

HUGO DE VRIES (1848-1935) Die Mutationstheorie. Verlag von Veit 1901-1903 Vol. I: xii, 648 pp., illus., 8 plates; Vol. II: xiv, 752 pp., illus., 4 plates. 23.7 cm.

Darwin, thorough as he was in marshaling evidence to support the concept of natural selection, was unable to account for the inheritance of the variations on which natural selection depends. However in 1900, De Vries, professor of botany at the University of Amsterdam, discovered the fundamental but long-unrecognized work of the Austrian monk, Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), who in 1866 had advanced a theory of genetic recombination and species variation which De Vries recognized as essentially identical to his own. De Vries gave full credit to Mendel but was able to add an observation of his own: the sudden, sometimes radical, changes in characteristics of certain plant species, which subsequently breed true, played an important role in the evolutionary mechanism, a view later supported by a wealth of evidence. The present work is De Vries' definitive treatise on mutation.

Cited references: Cushing V184; Garrison-Morton 240

Gift of John Martin, M.D.