Mendel's Legacy

"Classical genetics emerged in 1900 with the rediscovery of Mendelism and ended in 1953 with the publication of the double-helical structure of DNA. The story of how that happened is told in Mendel's Legacy: The Origin of Classical Genetics. The first work to explore the way in which the major principles of classical genetics emerged, this book traces the path from Mendel's profound discovery in 1865 in Europe, through the fields of breeding analysis, reproductive cell biology, cytology, and evolution, to their fusion in the early twentieth century to become the field of classical genetics. Mendel's Legacy also describes how the reductionist findings of classical genetics tied heredity to evolution and pointed the way to the "molecularization" of the gene."--Jacket.