Quotes About Mendel

Mendel's last forays into botany included the satisfying demonstration that even the greatest living scientists could be wrong. Armed with a fine paintbrush and a microscope, the poor-sighted abbot proved that a single grain of pollen was enough to fertilise an ovum – something that Charles Darwin had insisted was impossible.

In fact the discoveries of Gregor Mendel, which became known to the world in 1900, ought to have killed eugenics stone dead.

The Danish plant physiologist Wilhelm Johannsen gave Mendel's factors a new name: genes. "As to the nature of the 'genes,'" Johannsen warned, "it is as yet of no value to propose any hypothesis.

The "whole problem of heredity has undergone a complete revolution," Bateson declared. Mendel's discoveries could at last mature into a true science. Bateson christened it genetics.

The simple recipe for success that Mendel had instilled in his children from the cradle on consisted in never complaining, never asking for anything, striving to be the best in everything you do, and never trusting anyone. Alma had to carry this heavy weight on her back for several decades, until love helped her shed some of it. Her stoic attitude contributed to the air of mystery surrounding her, long before she had any secrets to keep.

The simple recipe for success that Mendel had instilled in his children from the cradle on consisted in never complaining, never asking for anything, striving to be the best in everything you do, and never trusting anyone.

Gregor Mendel's years of research with green and yellow peas showed that such a thing must exist. Colors and other traits vary depending on many factors, such as temperature and soil content, but something is preserved whole; it does not blend or diffuse; it must be quantized. Mendel had discovered the gene, though he did not name it. For him it was more an algebraic convenience than a physical entity.

It was not noisy prejudice that caused the work of Mendel to lie dead for thirty years, but the sheer inability of contemporary opinion to distinguish between a new idea and nonsense.