Gregor Mendel was a...
Female Science Professor wrote a response to a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education. One point of the Chronicle piece is that work that is not cited is pretty much useless.
Upon reading this, I snickered because I would think every scientist would know the story about how Gregor Mendel's work on genetics was pretty much lost and rediscovered later on. In fact, the wiki article says it was cited about 3 times over the next 35 years. Now, it's considered fundamental biology.
I remember learning about Mendelian genetics in my senior year of high school. (It got me a lot of mileage when I participated in the science olympiad biology competition at state that year.) However, I didn't learn that Mendel was actually trained as a physicist and that most of his published work was in meteorology. He studied physics under Christian Doppler. (You may have heard of him. *ba dum ching*)
Anyway, I think it's fascinating that his background was in physics, and I wonder if that had a lot to do with his experimental success in biology.
Upon reading this, I snickered because I would think every scientist would know the story about how Gregor Mendel's work on genetics was pretty much lost and rediscovered later on. In fact, the wiki article says it was cited about 3 times over the next 35 years. Now, it's considered fundamental biology.
I remember learning about Mendelian genetics in my senior year of high school. (It got me a lot of mileage when I participated in the science olympiad biology competition at state that year.) However, I didn't learn that Mendel was actually trained as a physicist and that most of his published work was in meteorology. He studied physics under Christian Doppler. (You may have heard of him. *ba dum ching*)
Anyway, I think it's fascinating that his background was in physics, and I wonder if that had a lot to do with his experimental success in biology.