Hugo de Vries

Hugo Marie de Vries (16th February 1848-21st May 1935), a Dutch biologist, was one of three men - see also Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak - who in 1900 rediscovered Gregor Mendel's work on genetics.

De Vries was educated at the Universities of Leiden, Heidelberg and Wruzburg. He became a professor of botany at the University of Amsterdam in 1878.

De Vries conducted a series of experiments hybridising varieties of plants in the 1890s and he discovered new forms among a display of the evening primrose Oenothera lamarcklana growing wild in a waste meadow. This led him to the same conclusions as Mendel: that inheritance of specific traits in organisms comes in particles. He even speculated that genes (which he called pangenes) could cross the species barrier, with the same gene being responsible for hairiness in two different species of flower. In this, he was well ahead of his time.

In the late 1890's, de Vries became aware of Mendel's obscure paper of 40 years earlier, and he altered some of his terminology to match. When he published the results of his experiments in the French journal Comtes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences in 1900, he neglected to mention Mendel's work, but after criticism by Correns, he conceded Mendel's priority.

He retired in 1918 from the University of Amsterdam but continued his studies with new forms.

His best known works are:

• Intracellular Pangenesis (1889)
• The Mutation Theory German edition (1900-03) English edition (1910-11)
• Plant Breeding (1907) German translation (1908)

References

Ridley, Matt, The Agile Gene, 2003, ISBN 0-06-000679-X, pp 231-2.

[[1]], History of Horticulture

[[2]], Hugo de Vries on heredity

External links

• Biographical sketch of Hugo de Vries with a picture
• Article relating the work of Gregor Mendel
• Concerning the Law of Segregation of Hybrids
• Intracellular Pangenesis
• Mendelweb
• Pangenes