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F V Monaghan

Publications and source records attributed to F V Monaghan.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

Mendel, the empiricist.

In contemporary texts in biology and genetics, Mendel is frequently portrayed as a theorist who was the father of classical genetics. According to some authors, he created his theory of inheritance to explain the results of his experimental hybridizations of peas. Others have proposed that he designed and carried out his experiments to demonstrate the correctness of a theory of inheritance he had already developed. We disagree strongly with these views of Mendel. Instead, we have come to regard him as an empirical investigator trying to discover the empirical natural laws describing the formation of hybrid peas and the development of their offspring over several generations. We have supported our view with an analysis of portions of Mendel's paper and his letters to Carl N ageli.

Genetics↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Reexamination of the fate of Mendel's paper.

The usual account is that when Mendel gave his paper, no one understood what he said and there were no questions and no discussion. Examination of available evidence indicates that this is not true. Also, it is usually said that Mendel's paper was lost or ignored from 1866 to 1900. This is not true either. However, with the possible exception of one person, none of those citing the paper showed any interest in or understanding of Mendel's explanations of his results.

Austria↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Tschermak: a non-discoverer of mendelism. II. A critique.

An examination of Tschermak's two papers of 1900 not only reinforces our conclusion cited in our first paper on Tschermak that he was not a rediscoverer of Mendelism, but also he did not understand Mendel when he had read it. His concept of dominance differed from that of Mendel, and his use of his own concept is inconsistent and contradictory. His discussion of his backcross data indicated that he had no idea of the nature of Mendelian ratios. Nowhere did he develop the ideas of segregation and independent assortment.

Crosses, Genetic↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Role of de Vries in the rediscovery of Mendel's paper. II. Did de Vries really understand Mendel's paper?

In this paper, we discuss briefly three of the several lines of evidence that we believe demonstrate de Vries's lack of understanding of Mendel's paper. In our view, at least part of de Vries's failure of understanding derives from the fact that he appears to have viewed Mendel's paper as being mainly about the inheritance of characters that was his own interest. Therefore, he looked at it to see whether Mendel had found any laws of inheritance. Mendel had done his research for another purpose, to find the laws describing the formation of hybrids and the development of their offspring. Thus, de Vries started his examination of Mendel's paper with a very fundamental misunderstanding of what it was about.

France↗