Origins of Modern Genetics
► Jean
Baptiste Lamarck (French, early 19th
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 (1744-1829)
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)
Modern Genetics
► Thomas
Morgan (1866-1945): Located
genes at chromosomes and developed
modern genetics through experiments on
Drosophila—fruit flies
► Oswald Avery (1877-1955) and colleagues:
Discovered in 1944 that DNA was the
molecule that contained genetic information
Thomas Morgan (1866-1945)
Oswald Avery (1877-1955)
Watson and Crick
► James
Watson (1928-) and Francis Crick
(1916-2004): “Cracked” the molecular
structure of DNA and explained how the
genetic codes were transferred from one
generation to another.
► Maurice Wilkins (1916-2004) and Rosalind
Franklin (1920-1958): 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