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Mendel in America: Theory and Practice, 1900-1919
by Diane B. Paul and Barbara A. Kimmelman
Copyright (c) 1988 by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
(This article originally appeared in The American Development of Biology,
edited by Ronald Rainger, Keith R. Benson and Jane Maienschein, (University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), pp. 281-310. It appears at MendelWeb, for
non-commercial educational use only, with the kind permission of the authors
and the University of Pennsylvania Press. The entire volume has been
reprinted by, and is currently available from, Rutgers University Press.
Although you are welcome to download this text, please do not reproduce it
without the permission of the authors and the University of Pennsylvania
Press.)
The complete text can be found at:
http://www.stg.brown.edu/webs/MendelWeb/archive/MWpaul.txt
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This is only a key fragment of the text:
"The dominant force at the 1902 New York Conference was Bateson; his lead
paper combined a straightforward account of Mendel's laws with a discussion
of their applied, and especially commercial, importance. To the breeders he
argued:
Now when we come to the question of the significance of these
things to the breeder and the hybridist, it will be found that the
significance is exceedingly great. I am afraid of saying that we
have reached a point when the practical man who is doing these
things with a definite, economic object or commercial object in
view can take the facts and use them for his definite advantage.
But we do for the first time get a clear sight of some of the
fundamentals of which he will in future work, and it cannot be now
very many years, if the investigations go on at the present rate,
before the breeder will be in a position not so very different
from that in which the chemist is: -- when he will be able to do
what he wants to do, instead of merely what happens to turn
up.
The following two papers, by C. C. Hurst (Bateson's close friend and
colleague) and Hugo de Vries, focused on Mendel as well. In all, ten
participants either presented papers or made extended remarks promoting
Mendelism. Seven were Americans: Willet Hays of the Minnesota Agricultural
Experiment Station, Liberty Hyde Bailey of Cornell, S. A. Beach of the New
York Experiment Station, Walter Austen Cannon of Columbia and the New York
Botanical Garden, and O. F. Cook an W. J. Spillman, both of the USDA. If
members of this group are to be characterized as "breeders," it follows that
many breeders active in promoting Mendelism were academic biologists. Of
course they were academic biologists of a particular kind, both
institutionally and in respect to their goals. These biologists were
generally affiliated with the USDA or state agricultural colleges and
experiment stations and they aimed to combine practical public interests
with theoretical science.
Our paper details this crucial, yet historically neglected, role of this
group in introducing and popularizing Mendel's work. But we should note that
biologists with a primarily theoretical orientation were also generally
receptive to Mendelism (in sharp contrast with naturalists, who were
decidedly cool)."[18]
18 This point is illustrated by the diverse character of articles on
Mendelism published in American journals between 1901 and 1903. The first to
appear was Charles Davenport's "Mendel's Laws of Dichotomy," in the
Biological Bulletin, 1901, 2: 307-310. It was quickly followed by E. B.
Wilson, "Mendel's Principles of Heredity and the Maturation of the
Germ-cells," Science, 1902, 16: 991-992; Walter Sutton, "On the Morphology
of the Chromosome Group in Brachystola magna," Biol. Bull., 1902, 3: 24-39;
W. J. Spillman, "Exceptions to Mendel's Law," Sci., 1902, 16: 709-710 and
784-796; R. A. Emerson, "Preliminary Account of Variation in Bean Hybrids,"
15th Annual Report of the Nebraska Experiment Station, 1902; and Walter A.
Cannon, "A Cytological Basis for Mendelian Cases," Bulletin of the Torrey
Botanical Club, 1902. Other early accounts include Liberty Hyde Bailey, "A
Discussion of Mendel's Law and its Bearings," Address before the Society for
Plant Morphology and Physiology, Washington, D. C., 29 Dec. 1902, published
as "Some Recent Ideas on the Evolution of Plants," Sci., 1903, 17: 441-454;
Walter Sutton, "The Chromosomes in Heredity," Biol. Bull., 1902, 4: 231-251;
and William Castle, "The Laws of Heredity of Galton and Mendel and some Laws
Governing Race Improvement by Selection," Proceedings of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1903, 38: 535-548; reprinted as "Mendel's Law
of Heredity," in Sci., 1903, 18: 396-406. Compare with the lack of interest
expressed by the Botanical Gazette. The first mention of Mendel is a
dismissive comment by the editor, John Merle Coulter, in a review of the
third edition of Liberty Hyde Bailey's Plant Breeding (Botanical Gazette,
1904, 37: 471-472). The American Naturalist was also unimpressed. Other than
a passing reference in a Botanical Note of 1902, there is no mention of
Mendelism until 1904, and then only in Charles Davenport's book reviews.
Editorial notes and articles first appear in 1907.
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