cross-pollination—he determined the detailed characteristics of their offspring, such
as height and color.Prior to Mendel, scientists believed that heredity characteristics of a species were
the result of a blending process, and that over time various parental characteristics
were diluted. Mendel showed that characteristics actually followed a set of specific
hereditary laws. He worked out what can be described as a mathematical matrix of the
characteristics, thus determining what characteristics were dominant and recessive in
the plants. (For more about matrices, see “Algebra.”)But Mendel had a hard time getting his results published. Even after publication
by a local natural history society, his work was ignored. Mendel gave up both garden-
ing and science when he was promoted to abbot. Coincidentally, and amazingly, by
1900 three different biologists working in three different countries—Hugo de Vries in
the Netherlands, Erich Tschermak von Seysenegg in Austria, and Karl Correns in Ger-
many—determined the hereditary laws independently. But they all knew about
Mendel’s work, graciously giving the credit for the findings to him. Mendel, rightfully,
is now commonly considered the “father of genetics.”What were some contributions John Haldanemade to genetics?
Scottish geneticist John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892–1964), along with Sir
Ronald Aylmer Fisher (1890–1962) and Sewall Green Wright (1889–1988), developed
population genetics. Among other contributions, Haldane’s famous book The Causes
of Evolution(1932) was the first major work of what came to be known as the modern
evolutionary synthesis.It made use of Charles Darwin’s theory of the evolution of
species by natural selection, presented in terms of the mathematical consequences of
Gregor Mendel’s theory of genetics, to form the basis for biological inheritance.What is computational biology?
Computational biology refers to biological studies that include computation, mainly
316 with computers. Many biologists study computational biology to develop algorithms
What is Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection?
E
volutionary biologist, geneticist, and statistician Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher
(1890–1962) first proposed Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection
in 1930. A mathematical concept, it states that the rate of evolutionary change in a
population is proportional to the amount of genetic diversity available. He is also
often credited with creating the foundations for modern statistical science.